Introduction
McDonald’s has established an intricate bond with Americans and its presence is felt in almost every corner of the world owing to its being the largest food retailer in the world. It now owns 30,000 local restaurants and caters to more than 52 million people in different parts of the world each day (MacDonalds Corporation, 2008). To maintain the market position and the competency, McDonald’s has to ensure that its employees are always inclined to work for the success of organization and they practice leadership. Thus McDonald’s has to develop the right fit of programs and strategies to train its employees.
Corporate & Work Culture
When conducting an analysis of the organizational culture of McDonald’s, one would discern that operations would highly be at the control of particular line manager. One would imagine that the manager being authoritative would use a telling style of leadership to guide the naive and inexperienced employees. However, the reality turned out to be completely different. According to Daft (2008, p. 73) one manager used a selling style of leadership and the repercussion of this approach was that the readiness level of her team was really high owing to her not only passing orders but also to obtaining feedback and alternatives to her decisions. This implied that the team had reached into later stages of development and were complacent enough to work and communicate outside their established roles.
Communication
Communication lines between the managers and the employees were very open and swift. Managers made efforts to remove all the vertical barriers to make the employees feel comfortable with the managers. According to Northouse (2007) managers have reportedly intervened in the matters pertaining to the employees to ensure their well being which demonstrates the level of concern of managers. This effort of managers extended to all levels of employees even if they are line workers only. Herzberg in his two factor theory contends that an organization is able to sustain good working conditions only if it has a well contended workforce and the employees remain satisfied as far as they are receiving the right motivation and recognition (Daft, 2008, p. 231). Again as mentioned earlier, this may apply to all work levels because even at lower positions, turnover should be low to avoid the costs of rehiring. To sum it up, the vision of the company should be that a contended workforce leads to contended customers (Marchington, and Wilkinson, 2002).
Training and leadership development
Hamburger University is a platform that is employed by McDonald’s to provide training and leadership sessions to its employees. This practice demonstrates that McDonald’s doesn’t only take its workforce as parts of a machine that are irreplaceable when the machine is non-operational, rather it believes it continuously polishing the skills of its employees because they understand that a good employee is hard to come by. Given this ideology, training is not just provided to the executives and managers but also to lower level employees to reinforce their culture and values in all the directions. Training also makes the employees feel satisfied and important because in a way, their proficiency is being developed which they couldn’t do on their own and opportunities are provided to them to fulfill their higher needs. One example of McDonald’s valuing its employees is that it has assigned a separate column to “people” in its corporate policy (McDonald's Corporation, 2008). By this it aims to establish that employees should first be treated as humans rather than as machine parts and thus their pay levels should be above the market rates accompanied with necessary fringe benefits.
Work-life Balance
Given the limitations of many employees, McDonald’s understands that not everyone is able to work during the fixed hours set by the management and that is why they offer different shift schedules so that they are able to accommodate everyone and provide them with healthy work life balance. The limitations of employees are such that some want full day work so they can work during the day schedule while there also many teenagers opting to work after school hours or on weekends, hence they can choose what matches their schedules the most. Since the requirements for most of the jobs are not so stringent, many people can apply and get accepted to fill in the position of other employee while that other employee is dealing with his social obligations. This highlights the value of McDonald’s for not bounding to the workplace. Flexible working hours is thus a source of motivation to the employees. First of all, they can shift their hours in order to give space to someone else while they are busy. This means that employees will remain honest to the employers and would not pretend to be sick in order to avoid work when they have other commitments. Second, a sense of comfort and esteem will be maintained between the managers and the employees (Daft, 2008, p. 242). Third, employee will be witness empowerment in being able to handle their work on their own. This authoritative nature of their work will make them feel important and satisfied.
Second source of motivation is the convenience offered in the location of these outlets because there is a McDonald’s outlet in almost every town. Thus the employees not only get a workplace that doesn’t require high proficiency in the academic manner but is also closer to their residents so they don’t have to travel further away. Even public transportation only leads to public places and McDonalds is usually present in public areas thus employees without cars can reach out to these places effortlessly. Previous studies have shown that employees usually leave their amazing work places just because of the large travel factor involved in it and now in light of the economic downturn when the prices of fuel are sky rocketing, it is beneficial to the employee to have his workplace in the neighborhood.
Internal promotion:
Internal promotion is described as promoting the employees from within the organization to higher position. In the recruitment process of McDonalds, resources have claimed that 40% of the senior managers are hired from inside the company. According to (Employee Handbook 2008) these employees started their career at a subordinate position of hierarchy for instance as crew members in the kitchen of the organization. HR utilized their training, evolving and progressing strategies on these employees to help them polish their skills. The advantage of doing internal hiring is that it gives motivation and challenge to the employees of progressing willfully and also gives them high level of employment security. Thus the current market condition of McDonalds demonstrate that they have always utilized good HR activities to develop a committed workforce and is able to deliver quality and customer satisfaction.
It is not farfetched to comment that McDonald’s has been practicing various components of the best practice model, but it is not able to implement the model to its fullest. This can be demonstrated by the fact that lower levels of employees like the one working in the kitchen generally don’t have a complete overview of the organization and no understanding of its strategies. Also the opinion of such lower level employee is not considered to be important to be made the topic of discussion at board meetings. However, contrary to the practices of McDonalds, Wal-Mart and ASDA ensure that the opinions of subordinates are given due consideration at the board meetings. Furthermore, the rewards are attributed on the basis of appraisal rather than performance.
Extensive training:
As the practice of providing training is commonplace in many organizations, McDonalds also deliver training sessions to enhance the skills of its employees and make them more consistent with the evolving organization. One such program is CDP (crew development program) to upscale the proficiency of its employees. Tapping on to the potential of increased growth, McDonald’s has realized the importance of training their crew members to take them upto the management level. There are a lot of other programs for the development of crew member to take them to the management position. However one drawback with the training given to McDonald’s employees is that the training sessions are not differentiated on the basis of the employee position and is the same for everyone because McDonald doesn’t spend excessive budget on training. (Employee Handbook (2008).
Selective hiring:
Another dimension where McDonalds employ best practice model is in hiring employees. The tools used for recruitment are internet application form and advertising on the glass walls of the stores. This process is cost efficient, and quick. After the application forms have been received, the entire process of screening employees begins in which employee that best matched the criteria of job position is called for interview.
Management Development
McDonalds has hired an approach in which they select trainee managers, of the age 21 or above with previous management experience, and position them as restaurant managers. This approach is known as McDonalds Management Development Curriculum the purpose of which is to give employees open opportunities into restaurant management positions once they have undergone structured training programs. According to Employee Handbook (2008) the curriculum is divided into four dimensions:
- Systems Management – targets assistant managers to make them into proficient managers.
- Shift Management – targets trainee managers and makes them competent in running shifts through training
- Restaurant Leadership – targets already managers to make them efficient leaders of that restaurant through training them in communication skills, team building skills etc.
- Business Leadership – targets general managers and try to establish in them strategy developing skills encompassing both internal and external factors.
Conclusion
Based on the above data, we can see that the HR department of McDonald’s values its employees and prepares resilient corporate policies. It ensures that the state of art technology is accessible in to all the employees and capable of making the production process faster to attend to the consumers in a prompt manner. It also ensures that sufficient growth opportunities are provided to those who want to develop their skill and move upward.
References
Daft, R. L. (2008). The Leadership Experience. Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western.
Employee Handbook (2008) McDonalds Restaurant Limited
Marchington, M and Wilkinson, A (2002) People Management And Development-Human resource Management At Work 2nd Edition CIPDNorthouse, P. (2007). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousdand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
McDonald’s Employment Experience Values Website: http://www.crmcdonalds.com/publish/csr/home/about/Employment_Experience.html
McDonald’s Corporation website: http://mcdonalds.com/corp/about.html
