In Anti-Bias Training, Starbucks Enlists Hip-Hop Artist Common, Chairman Howard Schultz

Employees will be asked to share stories of bias; experts say such training is hard to do, measure

Starbucks Corp. is hoping that upcoming anti-bias training will help prevent fraught encounters like the one that led to the arrest of two black men at one of its cafes last month.

How effective it will be is an open question. Although such training has been used by companies for about two decades, its benefits are largely unproven and experts say it needs to be baked into an organization for the long term to really work.

“Expectations...