Dive Brief:
- Starbucks made a media splash months ago when it said it would offer full tuition coverage to employees working to earn an online undergraduate degree from Arizona State University.
- Now, with today being Veteran's Day, the Seattle employer has taken another step in that direction, as the Washington Post reported that Starbucks will extend the free tuition to a spouse or one of the employee's children ... if an employee is a veteran or active-duty military.
- Adrienne Gemperle, Starbucks's senior vice president of global human resources operations, told the Post that the benefit was designed to make the tuition benefit more relevant to the veterans the company is trying to hire.
Dive Insight:
After talking to current military employees, Starbucks found many of its veterans didn't take advantage of the benefit because they either already had a college degree or planned to pay for college through the G.I. Bill, the Post reported. As a result, they often asked if they could share the benefit with family members.
"There's a benefit from this as a recruitment tool as well," Gemperle told the Post. "It allows our veterans to look across their family's goals in the way that's most meaningful to them."
Starbucks is not alone in looking to hire to veterans, the Post points out. Comcast NBCUniversal said earlier this year it would hire 10,000 reservists, veterans and their spouses or domestic partners between 2015 and 2017. Wal-Mart, Accenture, Bank of America and AT&T also have all made veteran-hiring pledges.
Meanwhile, the Post reported, the 100,000 Jobs Mission, a coalition of employers skyrocketing from 11 to more than 200 companies, recently changed its name to the Veteran Jobs Mission, with a goal of hiring 1 million veterans.
