Hello again
Not surprisingly, McDonald's is the largest food service company in
the world. ( It is also one of the biggest private employers in the
United States, with over half a million workers ) The company has
roughly 10,000 locations which include the standard sit-in
restaurants, drive-through windows, and satellite sites. Only fifteen
to twenty percent of the restaurants are actually company-owned. The
rest are franchises, run by 2,659 independent owners who pay a fee (
which seems to be around $500,000) for a franchise.
Employees of McDonald's fall into three groups: restaurant workers,
corporate staff, and franchise owners. The first group is the biggest
- a local McDonald's restaurant usually employs between 50 and 65
people. Company staff members (between 4,000 and 6,000 nationwide)
work either at the corporate headquarters or at one of 40 regional
offices.
I presume it's the restaurant workers you are interested in.
Restaurants are generally staffed as follows
Crew Members constitute the entry-level position and are by far the
most numerous. A large majority are part-time workers, roughly
three-quarters. Their wages are low.
Swing (or "shift") Managers are the first true managerial position in
the hierarchy, although their hourly wages are only slightly higher
than crew-member wages.
Assistant Managers and higher are salaried.
There is one Restaurant Manager per McDonald's restaurant.
The prevailing public image of working at McDonald's is negative - get
a job as a crew person, and you are in a dead-end job.. However the
company emphasizes that a majority of McDonald's restaurant management
started as crew, with up to 67% of restaurant managers having started
at the "bottom". (And 50% of franchisees started as employees in the
restaurants).
Employee training at McDonald's is highly structured, and this is
where staff are taught the skills that everybody sees in action in the
restaurants.
Entry-level workers are first taken through the basic Crew Training
System. The program consists of on-the-job training and is largely
vocational. Each stage of advancement beyond the crew level then
entails a new training program, with the skills becoming more complex
and generalized.
The following is a quote taken from Bailey and Bernhardt's report:
McDonald's: A case study of the fast food industry
"Training begins immediately with a one-hour orientation on the
company. Each restaurant has its own video player and training room.
Step-by-step manuals and video tapes cover every detail of the
operation, everything from how to make a Big Mac to a shake. Crew
trainers then take the new employee through the workstations, one at a
time, until each is mastered. Each restaurant has 25 "stations" from
the grill area to the front counter. Trainers use a series of
checklists as new crew members move through the restaurant. A level of
competency is demonstrated and the activity is checked off on the SOC
- Station Observation Checklist. There is a follow-up SOC to get
certified on the station. The goal for each crew person is a 3/30
plan: in the first 30 days, a crew person learns 3 stations, and so on
until all the stations are mastered."
The report also goes on to detail the training required to "move up
the ladder", and is well worth reading for anyone interested in an
example of a corporate training regime in action.
McDonalds have a "customer first" philosophy and central to that is
the idea that customers should define what exceptional service is, and
front-line workers should be empowered to do whatever it takes to
respond in kind. This means that the staff should smile, always take
the customer into account, and always leave the customer happy.
Obviously they need restaurant "management" skills, such as
maintaining order accuracy, making sure food is hot and fresh,
maintaining quick service, maintaining impressive service, handling
customer complaints, maintaining hygeine and cleanliness and ensuring
customer value
There is an internal Quality Management system that ensures crew and
management are always following up on their specialized skills. For
example, crew are taught to make judgment calls by role playing; both
managers and crew are asked to identify what they liked about service
received in other stores, orienting them to the customer's
perspective. They are encouraged to enter discussion and training on
the skills used in the stores as detailed above. This "continuous
improvement" process is supposed to lead to a distinct quality
improvement system tailored for each individual store....obviously,
given the comments already on this question, it doesn't always work.
But I've been in McDonalds all over the world, and it is obvious that
the corporate culture and skills training is doing its job.
The experience is the same wherever you go, and that is either its
biggest strength, or its biggest weakness. :)
Hope that helps ....oh, and "Have a Nice Day"
Willie-ga
Bailey and Bernhardt's report: McDonald's: A case study
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~iir/ncw/wpapers/bailey_b/case1.html
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