Starbucks rolls out new employee benefits

Starbucks is rolling out a suite of benefits including mental health resources for employees, ride-share options to help them get home safely and technological developments to streamline mundane tasks.

While the coffee chain announced the new benefits for its North American store staff, there is the hope they will roll them out across Asia, a growing market for Starbucks in terms of size and importance.

The Starbucks philosophy has always been to have a strong, happy workforce. But it is now facing stiff competition from smaller, local chains of high-end coffee shops as well as larger rivals such as McDonald’s.

“Through strategic, long-term investments in labour hours, training, and streamlining tasks and processes critical to running a store, we will work to alleviate some of the pressure and stress that often limits our store managers to lead and grow,” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said in a letter to company employees.

The mental health programme starts with store managers who will take part in training sessions with clinical psychologists to learn “emotional first aid” and other ways of helping their employees. Starbucks will also offer subscriptions to mental health app “Headspace” next year.

Starbucks has 29,000 outlets worldwide, of which 8,600 are based in Asia.