Dive Brief:
- Using over 5,000 company reviews from Glassdoor.com, a firm called Monitor 360 applied its "Narrative Analytics" methodology to uncover the narratives that employees hold about Starbucks.
- The narratives, mined from those Glassdoor posts, were used to identify opportunities for Starbucks--and others in the retail industry--to improve employee engagement initiatives, optimize the externally-facing employment brand, and drive business success.
- An article at Huffington Post by Alex Cole and Jesse Stein of Monitor 360 outlined how the Narrative Analytics process helped Starbucks achieve its goal of boosting employee engagement, which was already high (an average rating on Glassdoor.com of 3.8 stars out of 5). But the level of turnover at Starbucks is still costly, requiring the company to invest $3,000 to replace just one barista.
Dive Insight:
Through Monitor 360's analysis of 5,000 U.S.-based employee reviews at Glassdoor, the firm surfaced six distinct organizational narratives that employees hold about the company, and measured their Narrative Volume.
As a result, one suggestion from the analysis was that Starbucks amplify narratives connected to company values. High impact narratives that emerged, like "Starbucks the Star," suggest that Starbucks employees are uniquely motivated by the company vision and commitment to employee engagement. Starbucks should articulate this vision to employees consistently and continually to ensure this narrative remains top of mind.
The authors also say that all employers should learn from Starbucks' employee engagement strategy that they need to better connect with employees on their own terms. The should leverage the wealth of online data from sites like Glassdoor as well as existing investments in internal data to understand what employees are saying about them, and gain insight into the narratives that drive perceptions and behavior.
