At first glance, you’d think Howard Schultz was running for President this November. He, of Starbucks CEO fame, has for several months now made very vocal calls to American businesses to get on their giddy-up and start working toward domestic job creation.
Now, his own company is making good on his call to arms. Just last week, news outlets reported on several new Starbucks products that will be manufactured stateside. The products will create jobs in their manufacturing, but sales of the products will go toward Starbucks’ Create Jobs for the USA fund.
I’m not going to point out the win-win for Starbucks. The trumpet call for job creation is one thing. Every Senator, Governor, and Presidential incumbent/candidate knows this (this last meeting of the G20 was entirely focused on just job creation and growth). But Starbucks gets to sell its own items in the process of making that trumpet call.
No fingers pointed. Schultz can have his cake and eat it too. And the reason I’m fine letting him off so easily? Because he’s right. Job creation should be a goal that American businesses – large and small – work toward. Our government has made just the term “job creation” into some near meaningless pundit-speak. Or perhaps the pundits have made it into jumbled government-talk.
Either way, I wonder if we’ve lost site of how important creating jobs really is. Aside from being a fundamental part of any large capitalistic economy – job creation is a driving force of innovation. Minds are small items. They need hands. They need other minds around in order to produce, refine and perfect the business model or system.
At Zirtual, we’re creating jobs. Assistants can now be virtual, and use the extra hours of their day to help their clients weed out some of the humdrum tasks of the day. Zirtual assistants are college students, grad students, travelers, journeyman, stay at home moms, and professionals in other arenas alike. Our group of Zirtual Assistants (ZA’s) come from all situations but deliver quality to clients each and every day. This I know to be true.
The flexibility allows for some of the easiest job creation around. Smart and capable workers are looking for jobs. Looking to fill time in their day with a job that allows for a personal relationship across the world wide web. And maybe it’s for this reason, with all the more capable and smart workers out there, that Zirtual has gotten ambitious in our plans to create 3500 new jobs in less than 5 years. Maybe when we get there Schultz will call us up for a Macchiato and a Zirtual assistant of his own. (Here’s the link for ya, Howard).
The larger point is that businesses shouldn’t be intimidated by the statistics we hear. Near 10% unemployment, over 12 million workers without jobs – we’ve heard numbers like these for years now. But it’s time for growth. And Starbucks may be a perfect example of this. Don’t forget, after all, that this is the same company that had to lay off thousands in 2008. Now it’s come out with these, putting job creation front and center (literally, at its coffee counters).
Which, of course, begs the question of Starbucks’ motives. Perhaps it’s for press. That’s fine. Regardless, as I said, job creation is undoubtedly healthy for the economy. Moreover, it’s healthy for any company that decides to use it as both an avenue and an endstop. Because, shouldn’t our businesses be striving in order to create more jobs? That’s where we are. That’s what we are doing.
