SECTION 1
McDonald's is one of the most renowned corporations in the world. The company has a presence in about 119 countries in the world and on every single day, it is estimated that the company serves more than 68 million customers. McDonald's had managed to be a leader in the world's fast-food industry and has been increasingly growing since it was first established in 1940 as s a single restaurant. The fast food industry is one that is highly competitive with both new entrants as well as already recognizable brands fighting for the market share (Yuece 12). Some of the fiercest competitors of McDonald’s include Burger King, Steers, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Wendy’s, and KFC among other private fast food chains (Yuece 12). However, one of the things that have propelled the company to its leadership status is brand loyalty. The company is constantly adjusting its recipes and food menus in order to meet the changing demands of its customers and this has created a huge sense of loyalty The company has about 2 million employers placing it only second to Walmart in terms of the largest private employers in the world. As mentioned, the company has branches all over the world with each branch having a store manager. The store manager is primarily responsible for all the business activities within the store including the hiring practices as well as coordinating with the senior management of the organization. With such a huge workforce or human resource, human resource management is a key aspect of the company’s overall functionality and operations (Yuece 18).
McDonald's exists in the food industry whose key tenets include quality, customer satisfaction service and hygiene (Mello 49). The company has been able to identify consistently and select a workforce that is not only able to meet these demands but that is also able to deliver on the company's philosophy and maintain its brand image (Aswathappa 192). The company realizes that for it to achieve its goals, its workforce must be motivated and committed, and there must be constant improvement and learning in the employees and this is, in fact, one of the key HR strategies in the organization. The process of strategic planning and goal setting is a motivating factor to the employers.
SECTION 2
There exist several unique HRM practices a McDonald's. One of the most distinguishable HRM practices at the company is training and development. McDonald's offers continuous training and development to its employees. This occurs through several activities that include day to day mentoring and coaching as well as technology assisted training and learning (Aswathappa 192). Managers in the different stores across the world are also taken through refresher management courses in order to be taught and gain crucial skills necessary for the daily and efficient running of the various stores belonging to the company (Aswathappa 192).
When it comes to human resource management strategy and planning, the company knows that it is important to plan for the employees. Company strategizes to have high qualified employees who are well trained well employed are selected by the company. The company carries out an analysis of its employees before they hire a new workforce. This assist MacDonald Company to know the number and the skills of new employees required.
When setting and planning the goals, the company comes up with specific goals. The manager accesses the departments in the company and assembles the company's employees, and together they come up with specific goals that need to be achieved. They then develop goals that are measurable. The company knows that goals that are immeasurable may lead to failure in an organization. The company thus involves all the stakeholders to come up with measurable goals. The company then implements business goals that are attainable by the business and its employees. Furthermore, it establishes relevancy and when setting and planning goals. The company knows that goals are important in the organization and should set deadlines. This is the reason why the company sets deadlines when planning for goals in the organization.
The seven steps of strategic planning include: defining where the company is now. The next step is stating the vision of the company to know what is expected from strategic planning. The next step is defining the obstacles. Knowing the resources required verses the available resources is another step in effective strategic management. The next step is to define the actual strategy followed by the tactics that are used to achieve these strategies and finally knowing what will be monitored and measured after effective strategic planning.
The goal panning is significant in the business and it assist in determining and communicating the value of information. It also describes the construction of workforce and also overseeing employee’s related risks and other issues. Through the risks assessment, the company maintains high performance workforce.
When it comes to employees, the company aspires to for them to have experience in all field of operations and, therefore, it is not unsure to find employees being moved from one area of the company to the other. This is primarily aimed at assisting the employees to acquire relevant experience in all area of business and ensure that they can perform satisfactorily regardless of where they are placed (McDonald's Corporate Careers n.p).
As mentioned earlier, McDonald’s understands that in order to obtain maximum productivity from its employees, they have to remain motivated. The company does various things to motivate its employee including giving them relatively good perks. In addition, the company is always promoting its employees. In fact, the company has a very well defined strategy of promoting from within. Whenever vacancies in management or supervisory positions arise, the first priority or the first people who are considered are the in-house employees (Aswathappa 193). The company is also constantly rewarding its employees and giving them various benefits including life insurance plans, recognition awards and even giving them a chance to invest in or buy the company’s shares. These are all HRM practices that are meant to motivate employees.
The MacDinald company maintains and manages the employee talent and skills. An effective employee talent and skill management will ensure the provision of quality services. It also ensures that the right workforce with the relevant skills is maintained in an organization. Job analysis is the process where the company assesses the jobs and job specification in the company. It is important as it helps the company come up with job requirements and qualification before hiring a new workforce. When carrying out job analysis and evaluation, the company interviews its new employees to get the relevant skills. The company also administers the questionnaire to the existing workforce to understand whether they are satisfied with jobs they are assigned in the organization. This is normally combined with observation.
The company also has a very transparent and unbiased hiring and selection strategy. The store manager is usually responsible for all the hiring and selections taking place within a given branch of the company (Bowen 372). Furthermore, it has a well-structured staff planning, recruitment, and selection process. The company knows that planning and recruitment are the means of determining the human resource needs of the organization. The positions for different employees are determined in the organization to improve the workforce and provide quality services.
An effective recruitment and selection process follow the following steps. The first step is to identify the vacancy and evaluate the need for new employees. The position that needs to be filled is identified. The next step is to develop the description of the position. The description of the position is crucial in that it outlines the requirements of the job. It will be used to set the question for interviewing the candidates who will fill that position. After the description of the position is done, the recruitment plan is then developed, and this assist the company to hire highly qualified staff in the organization. A search committee is selected who will assist in recruiting employees with relevant skills. Advertise for the positions to be filled and select short listed candidates. Interview the candidates to get the best candidates with required skills. Later on carry induction process. The process has been employed by the MacDonald Company and thus has selected the best workforce.
Interview with managers, supervisors, and other important stakeholders reveal that these individuals have great hopes and expectations for the company. A common vision for these individuals is for the company to become the most profitable organization in the world and to be the leading employer. These managers and leaders also feel and believe that human resources are key to the achievement of the organization's goals and objectives and the company should therefore keep on looking for and enacting new strategies that are meant to develop employees both personally and professionally so that they can continue working in the organization and be part of its growth. The same sentiments are shared by employees who also feel that the organization should perhaps do even more that it is currently doing in terms of catering for their development so as to make sure that it is not only the goals of the company that is being pursued but that the employees goals are also met as part of this journey. However, it is important to note that most of the employees contend that the company is doing its best to try to cater for their well-being or welfare although there is obviously so much more that can be done.
The techniques used in employment planning and forecasting are based on demands for goods and services. Therefore, the techniques employed in this section include the determination of revenues and developing staffing plans in an effective way. In essence, forecasts of demand are calculated basing on individual units or company broad needs. The three probable areas to the forecast include anticipated personnel headcount, the current supply of external as well as internal candidates.
Effective recruitment is relatively vital for every company. Workforce is crucial to the company as they help in ensuring that the objectives and goals of the organization are attained. In this regard, the recruitment process ought to be effective and transparent (Aswathappa p.32). The significance of effective recruitment is that it make sure that the potential candidates are skilled and with the desired knowledge regarding the job. For example, in MacDonald effective recruitment will make sure that the employees added to the workforce possess the right expertise to handle the operations of the company.
According to one of the managers in the company, satisfying the internal customers who are the employees is the first step towards satisfying the outside customers. An internal source of employment involves getting employees within the company to take up some vacant positions or promotions (Ilhan p.43). Thus the sources of internal recruitment include promotions to higher levels, internal replacement where another employee has left the company, rewards due to excellent work and shifting to other better departments due to gained skills and experience.
On the other hand, external sources involve recruitment of external workers to better the performance of the company. Of note, external employees have worked for various or large companies, hence they are innovative and can bring new ideas to the company. MacDonald will benefit from external employment in that the company will have employees who can bring ideas to boost the performance of the organization.
The process of getting the desired candidate is comparatively hard for an interviewer. There are the various selection of conducting interviews. These include group interview, face to face interview, panel interview, telephone interview, behavioral interview and stress interview. An ideal type of interview that MacDonald can adopt is face to face interview, panel interview, group interview and behavioral interview. Additionally, there is other type selection such as interview structure, situational interviews, competency interviews, job-related interviews and behavioral interviews.
When conducting interviews, interviewers ought to uphold to certain professional values and expertise. Usually, interviewers are the determiners of the candidates. For this matter, they should possess integrity of the highest order. Precisely, interviewers should provide a comfortable atmosphere for the potential candidates so that they become free and ready to give their answers. Additionally, interviewers must come prepared. Essentially, should structure their questions well and has to understand the company in detail. Interviewers should also possess the ability to improvise. In this case, they have to comprehend how to follow the structured questions as well as asking questions from outside. A good interviewer should be in a position to listen well. Furthermore, an interviewer should have the ability to manage the meeting.
Situational questions in an interview focus on the future. It includes what the candidate will do in theoretical situations. For example, what will you do during when during a software failure in the company? How will you respond to employee conflicts in the company? Behavioral questions involve asking the candidate some questions about how they handled some tasks. For example, give us a brief example of how you did that? Describe a way and steps you followed to accomplish the task? Background question involves asking the candidate about their educational and work backgrounds; what experience do you have?
These feelings are echoed by the mission of the company’s HRM which states that the company hugely values the growth, as well as the contributions of the human resource (McDonald's Mission and Corporate Values n.p). These feelings are also espoused by the core values of the company which express that the company only seek the people who are able to think, feel as well as express themselves and who are willing to grow and learn together with the company (McDonald's Mission and Corporate Values n.p).
There are various challenges that are faced by the various stakeholders in the company including the leaders, the senior management, and supervisors. The food sector is a service industry and mainly involves dealing one and one with customers. Customer complaints and misunderstandings are common at the workplace, and the managers have to effectively deal with these. A lot of times, disputes emerge because of minor disagreements or misunderstandings and the supervisors and managers in the workplace have reacted appropriately. In addition, the huge brand loyalty that the company enjoys means that many McDonald’s stores are often filled to the brim and the managers have to coordinate with the employees to ensure that service is delivered to the highest level and that quality is not comprised.
A major problem that faces the senior management in regards to HRM in the company is relatively high turnover rates (Yuece 15). There have been relatively high turnover rates in the company and the management has been trying to overcome this problem by adequately looking at employees’ needs and trying to meet them as well as encouraging employees to speak out on their desires and the things that they feel should be changed at the company (Yuece 16). This is all aimed at ensuring that the challenge and problem of high turnover that has affected the company negatively over the years are effectively resolved.
In future, the company hopes to grow and expand even more, and this means that it will increase its overall human resource. The company hopes to refine its hiring and recruitment strategies to ensure that it only hires highly qualified and motivated individuals who will be committed to the achievement of the organization’s goals. The company also hopes to give more independence and autonomy to employees and actively involve them in high-level decision-making in the company.
It appears that in terms of HRM initiatives, there is a slight gap between what this being said and what is being practiced although the company is trying its best to close this gap. The company, for example, claims to hire only highly qualified and committed individuals yet turnover rates speak otherwise. In addition, there is a still a minor discrepancy in hiring practices as unqualified and unmotivated individuals are still managing to find their way into the company.
SECTION 3
This case study on MacDonald’s is a huge learning experience, and there are, in fact, several things that van be learned from this organization. The first thing is that employees must constantly be motivated if they are to perform at the optimum level and if they are to maximize their productivity. It emerges that motivation can be enhanced in employees by giving them various benefits and perks, promoting in-house promotions and giving recognition rewards.
The second thing learned is that an organization that helps to have a highly performing workforce must put in place hiring and recruitment practices that can sieve only the best employees and incorporate them into the company. However, this is not the end. The objectives of the organization and those of the employees must be aligned if the employees are to remain committed to the company and if maximum output is to be obtained from them.
Works Cited
Aswathappa, K. Human resource and personnel management. Tata McGraw-Hill Education, 2005.
Bowen, David E. "Managing customers as human resources in service organizations." Human resource management 25.3 (1986): 371-383.
Mello, Jeffrey. Strategic human resource management. Cengage Learning, 2014.
"McDonald’s Corporate Careers: AboutMcDonalds.com." McDonald's Official Global Corporate Website: AboutMcDonalds.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
"McDonald's Mission and Corporate Values: AboutMcDonalds.com." McDonald's Official Global Corporate Website: AboutMcDonalds.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. <http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/our_company/mission_and_values.html>.
Yuece, Ilhan. "SWOT Analysis of McDonald’s and Derivation of Appropriate Strategies." (2012) McDonald's Mission and Corporate Values.
