Running head: INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Integrative Organizational Communication Paper

Krista Jackson
COM/520
November 17, 2014
Michael Minaudo

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Integrative Organizational Communication Paper

Starbucks Company
A business proposal for effective strategies for organizational communication

Prepared for
Howard Shultz
CEO
Starbucks Company

Prepared by
Krista Jackson
Vice President of HR
Starbucks Company

November 17, 2014

Proposal Number: KJ13-13

* This is a fictitious proposal and the company and the statistics are not accurate.

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Starbucks Company
A business proposal for effective strategies for organizational communication

Executive Summary
Background
Starbucks Company is a global coffee company with over 150,000 employees in our business.
We have projected annual earnings of 14.9 billion which is very high for an organization in the
coffee industry. The company is the leading coffee organization worldwide. With our
advancements, Starbucks Company is providing the world with the best coffee in the world. The
company is in the Fortune 500 for all of our accomplishments we have achieved in our 43 years
in the industry. Our products include coffee beverages, tea beverages, pastries, whole ground
coffee, tea boxes, sandwiches, and many more products we keep adding to our collection to meet
our consumers needs.
At the moment, Starbucks Company needs a look at some of our human resources and company
advancements, including more effective strategies for organizational communication within our
company. With our rising revenues and continuing to add new stores and more employees, we
need to make sure that we are effectively communicating throughout our business. The increase
of profits is a result in how much we innovate each year, changing our products and adding new
things to meet our customers needs. We need to do an extensive review and employee
evaluation to meet our organizations communication needs.
Objective
Starbucks Company needs to use their experts in the Human Resources team to implement
research on how we conduct our business communication to make us more effective. Because of
our growing business each year we need to make sure we are doing everything we can to make
sure all of our new employees are comfortable and knowledgeable in how to communicate with
everyone throughout the business. We also need to make sure that our current employees are also
being updated with our advanced strategies for communication within the business.
Goals
Starbucks companys research programs and teams have conducted studies in our headquarters in
Seattle, Washington to develop a plan. Based on the store and employees increase in Starbucks
Company, the Human Resource teams are working on how to conduct these new changes in the
effective communication within our company worldwide. The changes are going to be
implemented throughout the organization, so everyone is informed. Starbucks Companys main
employees are working in our stores worldwide. Our employees expect the respect, knowledge,
leadership, and changes to be handled in a professional manner to further their stake in the
company. Continuing this education with our employees of our guidance Starbucks Company is
now going to implement new changes and how to get these changes around the company
worldwide effectively. The human resources team has come up with five goals:
Audience-centered

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Background/Diversity
Leadership
Teams/Family
Technology
The goals discussed are going to guide Starbucks Company as we educate and inform our
employees of our research and goals to create a better effective communication within our
business. These researched goals in the Starbucks Company will give us a better idea about how
to go about communicating these goals to our employees worldwide to help our company and
employees grow as a whole.
Methods
Starbucks Company has a team in human resources who are experts who have researched,
trained in these aspects, and have the professionalism to help in our current situation. With our
current topics presented and the amount of employees, Starbucks Company has researched our
goals with implementing them with employees in a few stores to see its effectiveness. There are
two main areas we focused on to implement these goals: first the human resource team will
gather more information with trying our new plan on a few more stores to make sure that is
getting the success we are looking for. This is how we start off any new plan within the
organization. We test it out first with a few stores and then expand so we know that our plans are
effective for our organization. Second we will document how well the research is going and
make changes, so our plan is more effective. We want to do extensive research to make sure we
are not wasting money, and to make sure that we do not have to tackle this situation again so
soon in the future. These two methods will help our employee communication through the
organization in many ways to make it more effective.
Costs
The table below presents the costs we estimate to incur through this process:
Our Initial
information we
researched
Planning and
Evaluation of the
goals
Implementing our
goals in our stores
Total Project Costs

Estimated Costs for Effective Communication Changes

Units
Rate
Total Costs ($)
786 hours
$62 hr. (avg.)
$48,732
Units
564 hours

Rate
$59 hr. (avg.)

Total Costs ($)

$33,276

Units
1,200 hours

Rate
$72 hr. (avg.)

Total Costs ($)

$86,400
$168,408

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Market Forecast
Starbucks Company is the leading coffee industry worldwide, and we are facing potential
competition with other coffee competitors. The increased competition shows that we are in need
to face some of our situations in a different way to be more successful and stay ahead of our
competition coming in the future. Economic conditions have not decreased the need of coffee
worldwide, in fact, it is a growing business that many are branching out in to try and compete.
Our few changes with our goals will change our business for the best. It will bring about better
employee morale and better productivity within our business. Effective Communication is the
goal we need to achieve that we have put in the background to further other products.

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Starbucks Company
A business proposal for effective strategies for organizational communication
Introduction
The human resource team for Starbucks Company appreciates the opportunity to analyze the
request for a proposal (RFP) that was given on November 17, 2014. We have researched
extensively the information of our five goals for a few months to make sure we had all of our
information accurate for our Starbucks Company. Our whole human resource team has been very
helpful and working very hard for a complete proposal for the Starbucks Company. Our
managers, employees, and history have given us a great start for more effective communication.
The human resource team honored to have this opportunity to gather this information for a
proposal for our Starbucks Company.
Proposed Action
Our first step is to evaluate our organizations communications within our organization. There is a
great impact in effective communication that we need to address to succeed. Effective
communication analysis produced by the human resource team will show what we are lacking
and how to implement our four goals. The analysis will include the following:
Our Initial information we researched
Planning and Evaluation of the goals
Implementing our goals in our stores
We will try these goals on a select few stores and expand from there to make sure our plan is
working before going worldwide. These tests will help us evaluate if we need to make any
changes to our process to make it as successful as possible. Our initial evaluation shows that our
main impact in building relationships, creating efficiencies, and developing effective content are:
Audience-centered approaches to employees
Paying close attention to background and diversity to meet everyones needs
Leadership to keep our goals on track, and help employee morale
Teams/Families within our workplace to enhance the employee relationship and
build trust
Technology to keep us up to date and help us better communicate within the
business
These goals will have an impact on the organization to help us communicate more effectively
because, The psychological perspective focuses on how characteristics of individuals affect
their communication. (Cornelissen 2000). The employees need the quality communication to
bring success to the business and help better understand how to do this effectively.

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Starbucks Company will start with their leaders first showing them what our goals are so they
can better guide our employees along the way. Great leadership goes a long way when you use
effective communication because, Leaders at all levels in organizations need to address both the
concerns of uniformity and diversity to be effective. (Ayman & Kreicker 1994). Leaders should
build trust with their employees to help them better absorb the information they are about to be
presented. Effective leaders will help employee morale during this transition to our new effective
communication goals.
We must then use the audience-centered approach to show them that they are the main people,
and they are respected. If you do not show your audience that this information is centered
specifically around them to meet all of their needs, it will not be a successful encounter. Using
the audience centered approach you must also look at the other goal of background and diversity.
You must know your audience and how each one is different. If you do not know your audience
and what is appropriate for them, they will not all understand all of the information presented
that needs to be addressed. We also need to accept the different backgrounds and diversities so
we do not offend anyone in this process. Every employee is just as important and should be
treated that way.
We have gotten away from our one of our core values of being a team and a family at work. We
want to help build these relationships so our team has a better understanding of each other
because, These teams were developed to build employee morale through worker empowerment,
and increase productivity, quality and profits for the company. (Ige & Kleiner 1997). There used
to be a monthly team get together to help employees and managers interact and show that
everyone is included. We used to consider ourselves a Starbucks family and this made each work
day more enjoyable. This helps our employees stay focused and happy for our customers. We
should also make it mandatory to do our group community projects. These helped us and the
community all in one process. Just changing our outlook on our team and making our employees
closer will help with employee morale and our businesses success.
The last thing we need to address is technology. Our communication with other employees and
managers is usually always written. Being able to look at what problems we think needs to be
addressed as managers and employees will help the business run smoother. There needs to be
more effective communication, and technology can help. Each store could have their own page
or blog so you know what needs to be done on your shift. A checklist for each shift that
employees can check off as they go will help things run better. We are so busy each day with all
of the tasks we need to accomplish that we are not connecting on a level that other businesses are
achieving. We need to stay current to help our employees and business, so we can better
understand problems or successful stories. Technology is becoming a very effective
communication throughout businesses, and we just need to take that next step to improve our
organization.
Our team will evaluate how these five steps are affecting our organization with our
advancements. We will help managers/leaders with the information we need our whole company
to know. The human resource team has been very effective in the past in changes that help the
organization be more successful, and this is our goal with these few enhancements. Effective
communication helps the organization, employees, and customers. These improvements in

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effective communication will outweigh the costs in the long run. We will be bringing in more
revenue for our business by just spending a little to help train our employees in better effective
communication.
Costs
The table below is an estimated cost for our goals presented.
Table of Estimated Costs
Rate

Initial Information
Gathering

Units

Review of our four

goals to implement
Training the audiencecentered approach
Training for effective
leadership
Training for
background and
diversity
Training for Teams
and Family
Training for
Technology
Feedback from
employees

100 hours

$50

$5,000

90 hours

$65

$5,850

90 hours

$65

$5,850

90 hours

$65

$5,850

90 hours

$65

$5,850

90 hours

$65

$5,850

50 hours

$50

$2,500

Subtotal:

$36,750

Evaluation of
Effective
Communication
Worldwide
Review of training
the audiencecentered approach
Review training
Leadership
Review of
Background and
diversity
Review of training
for Teams and

Units

Rate

Total Cost ($)

Total Cost ($)

75 hours

$50

$3,750

75 hours

$50

$3,750

75 hours

$50

$3,750

75 hours

$50

$3,750

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Family
Review of training
for technology
Consultation for
Effective
Communication and
Alternatives
Provide a detailed
documentation of
project
Provide guidance
throughout the
process
Provide feedback
from the whole
organization

75 hours

$50

$3,750

Subtotal:

$18,750

Units

Rate

Total Cost ($)

60 hours

$45

$2,700

400 hours

$50

$20,000

50 hours

$45

$2,250

Subtotal:

$24,950

Total Project Costs

$80,450

Note: This is not based on any real or accurate estimates.

Closing
Starbucks Companys human resource team is knowledgeable and professional who are working
to achieve our goals of more effective communication in the workplace to bring about a better
working environment and to be more successful. With these five steps we have no doubt of
improving our business and goals as an organization. We have over 40 years of experience with
our human resources team, and we have no doubt in our abilities and experience to further our
businesses success. We will improve employee morale and help get our employees back in
effective communication since it has been overlooked lately.
If you would like to accept our proposal on effective communication training, please provide a
signature of an authorized individual. There is a space provided below and the date needs to be
included. The proposal will expire on January 1, 2015. I think this is more than enough time to
go over our proposal. If you have any questions or terms you would like to discuss with the
agreement please contact me and let me know. The human resource company is looking forward
to your response and implanting this plan.
Sincerely,

Krista Jackson
Krista Jackson

INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION PAPER

Vice President of Human Resources
Starbucks Company

Accepted for Starbucks Company by

Name: ______________________________________
Signature:____________________________________ Date: ___________

10

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11

References
Ayman, R., Kreicker, N. A., & Masztal, J. J. (1994). Defining global leadership in business
environments. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 46(1), 64-77.
doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1061-4087.46.1.64
Joep Cornelissen, (2000) "Corporate image: an audience centred model", Corporate
Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 5 Iss: 2, pp.119 125
Christine M. Ige, Brian H. Kleiner, (1997) "How to coach teams in business the John Wooden
way", Team Performance Management: An International Journal, Vol. 3 Iss: 1, pp.40 - 42