Many corporations use ‘Social Responsibility’ for PR purposes and to make themselves look good to their customers to generate goodwill and increase sales.

Starbucks knows what they are doing. They are clearly focused on doing well (business metrics) by doing good for their people and just launched full tuition reimbursement for their partners (employees) with NO commitment beyond college.

“I believe it will lower attrition, it’ll increase performance, it’ll attract and retain better people,” Starbucks CEO Howard D. Schultz told the New York Times.

This is the perfect example of how to engage your people, treat them well and do well as a result. Below is a short powerful video about the College Achievement Plan.

Criticism of these companies abounds by people who only seek to find the nuggets of negative and intentionally paint an entire company with that ugly brush. No company is perfect. No person is perfect. We can only aspire.

We can all aspire to follow Starbucks example and freely give when we can, without expectation.

It is not often I find myself inspired by a company.

I don’t know who in Starbucks brought this up as a possibility and who recommended this to Howard Schultz, but thank you. You are doing more than educating people. You are helping repair trust in our society that organizations can do well by doing good.

If you want to read more about this, see it on Starbucks website.

Let’s do our part and find a way to follow Starbucks example.