Human Resource Management in McDonald's

This report discusses the human resource management practices in McDonald's, including the overview of the organization, critical appraisal of HR process, relation of HR activities with corporate culture and strategy, and the challenges faced by the company. It covers topics such as recruitment and selection, performance appraisals, reward management, and motivational framework in recruitment, retention, and motivation of key staff. The report also highlights the importance of organizational culture and the challenges faced by McDonald's in terms of employee motivation, training and development, and maintaining a positive culture.

Project- Human
Resource Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Overview of organisation............................................................................................................3
Critical appraisal of HR process.................................................................................................4
Relation of Human resource activities with corporate culture and strategy of the organization.
.....................................................................................................................................................6
Human resource challenges faced by the company....................................................................7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Human resource management is referred to as the practice which involves managing the
people in order to achieve the better business performance. It is a function of management which
is concerned with motivating, hiring and maintaining the workforce of the company. It deals with
the issues which are relating to the employees like training, hiring, compensation, hiring,
communication, administration and motivation (Bailey and et. al., 2018). The company chosen
for this report is McDonald's, which is an American company dealing in fast food. It was
founded in the year 1940 and is headquartered in Chicago, USA. This report shall cover
description of the company, critical appraisal of the HR process, relation of HR activities with
corporate culture and strategy and the challenges faced by company in relation to human
resource practices.
MAIN BODY
Overview of organisation
McDonald's is a fast food based company which was founded as the restaurant which
was operated by Maurice McDonald and Richard. The organisation initially began with the
hamburger stand and later turned the business into the franchise. Its product line includes
hamburgers, French fries, chicken, soft drinks, desserts, milk shakes, wraps, pan cake, breakfast
and many other. The company has approximately 210,000 employees who contributes in the
success of the organisation. It is world's largest chain of restaurant in terms of revenue which
serves around 69 million of customers on daily basis in around 100 countries (Boella and Goss-
Turner, 2019). This company follows divisional organisational structure where the business
activities are divided into components which are given their responsibility as per the
organisational requirement. There is a corporate control in relation to the managerial direction
and control. For instance, the directives and mandates of the company is passed from CEO to the
middle managers and the restaurant manager and its personnels in the organisation owned
operations and among the franchise. It has a function based groups in the corporate structure
where the company has people group for the human resource management, supply chain and
sustainability group for the management of supply chain and many other. Each of the group is
under the leadership of the senior manager and corporate executive. This organisational structure
helps and supports the controlling and monitoring of the global operations (Bratton and , 2017).

Critical appraisal of HR process.
The human resource process refers to fundamental strategies which the leader of HR
implement in order to ensure successful workforce cycle and the work experiences. This process
is the way of bringing consistency and also the visibility to the common function of HR
department (Brewster, Mayrhofer and Farndale., 2018). The HR manager of McDonald's follows
different practices of HR which involves the following-
Recruitment and selection-
It is a process which involves attracting the candidates in order to interview them with
company. It involves the process of posting the job advertisement on the websites or newspaper
in order to attract and retain the talented workforce into the company (Chelladurai and Kerwin,
2018). The contribution of each employee is important for the success and growth of the
company so it is important for McDonald's to choose the right candidate at right place. If a
wrong candidate is selected, it impacts the business much more when the company does not hire
at all. Recruitment is regarded as the key strategic activity for business.
Strength: The major benefit of this practice is that it involves strong pool of applicants
who have accurate qualifications so that the company can screen out of it the best employee who
can contribute to business success and growth. McDonald's must initiate recruitment of right
candidate at right place in order to reduce the employee turnover and boost morale of employees
(Zaid, Bon and Jaaron, 2018).
Weakness: The process of recruitment may not be always efficient and this is its greatest
weakness. For instance, traditional means of recruitment like job advertisement on website or
any online portal such as LinkedIn as it is not important that a candidate shall see the post and
choose to apply there. So McDonald's must look at other methods of recruitment in order to
attract talented candidate (Delery and Roumpi, 2017).
Performance appraisals-
It is the process which involves evaluating the performance and productivity of the
employees in order to achieve the pre determined set of aims. It is the best way to let the
employees about how they are performing and also involves getting feedback about how the
company is performing. It is important to have the effective strategy for the performance
appraisal in order to motivate the workforce as it involves increasing the productivity of the
employee, thereby seeking to engage the employees in order to retain the talent (Gigauri, 2020.)

Strength: This practice involves telling the workforce regarding their performance and
this motivates the employees as they feel that their work is being noticed and appreciated by the
employer. The employee of McDonald's will feel motivated and will work to improve their own
performance and understand the importance of improving their skills (Zaid, Jaaron and Bon,
2018).
Weakness: This practice may be subject to biasness as the employer may rate or evaluate
the performance of other on the basis of general impression which is gives. The McDonald's
must ensure that the performance appraisal is done in a fair manner so that no employee is
demotivated during this process (Hee and Jing, 2018).
Reward management-
It is an excellent way of motivating the workforce as it is a motivational practice where
the employees are rewarded for their achievement and success. This practice involves motivating
and retaining the employees so that there is employee satisfaction and enhanced company
productivity. It revolves around developing, designing and implementing the appropriate system
of monetary and non monetary rewards so that performance of the organisation is improved and
the workers are motivated to give their best (Heikkinen, Lämsä and Niemistö, 2020).
Strength: This practice of HRM involves boosting the productivity of the employees
which leads to job satisfaction and retention of the workforce. McDonald's can implement this
practice in order to enhance the employee engagement and make them feel motivated by offering
them monetary and non monetary rewards (Yong, Yusliza and Fawehinmi, 2019).
Weakness: This practice of reward management may be cost prohibitive and does not
demonstrate the commitment of the company to the workplace equity. McDonald's must focus
on its cost before offering high rewards to its employees as it may increase its cost and affect
profitability (Kaufman, 2019).
Motivational framework in recruitment, retention and motivation of key staff
It is important for the company to ensure employee engagement and retention as the
workers are regarded as the driving force in order to achieve the accomplishment and
development of the company's objectives and goals. It is important for the managers in
McDonald's that they motivate the employees so that they can get essential result for the
company. By motivating the employees, the employers of the company can retain the skilful and

talented workforce which will result in increased productivity of the organisation (Kaufman,
2020).
Herzberg have introduced the motivational theory which distinguishes two different kinds
of factors which motivates the employees. These two include the motivating and hygiene factors.
The main emphasis in this theory is that the factor may either be hygiene or motivating but both
cannot be present at the same time. The motivating factor includes the recognition, appreciation,
challenging work, growth, advancement and the responsibility while the hygiene factor includes
status, salary,k job security, supervision and many other. According to this theory, if the
motivating factors are present, it leads to employee satisfaction while if the hygiene factor is not
present, it results in dissatisfaction but these two cannot be treated as opposite to each other
(Kianto, Sáenz and Aramburu, 2017).
The employers of McDonald must ensure that the two factors are present so that there is
no dissatisfaction of work among the workforce. The presence of these factors will lead to
employee retention and engagement which will result in retaining key staff.
Relation of Human resource activities with corporate culture and strategy of the organization.
The organisational culture plays a pivotal role in the success of the company. It is
basically the proper way in which the workers must behave in the company. The culture consists
of the shared values and beliefs which are established by the leaders and is then communicated
through different methods, thereby shaping the perception of employee, understanding and
behaviour (Mammadova and Jabrayilova, 2018). The organisational culture of McDonald's
supports the company's industry positioning goal. It is well known that McDonald's is a global
brand and it uses its culture in order to attract talented employees and the customers. The
company's culture defines habits, values and culture which influences the behaviour of
workforce.
The culture of McDonald's emphasises on the human resource efficiency and
development. It supports the success and growth in the international market of fast food. Cultural
plays an important role in implementing the activities of human resource and vice versa
(Morgeson, Brannick and Levine, 2019). The characteristics of the organisational culture of
McDonald's is discussed below- People centric- The culture of the company prioritises the needs and development of the
employee. The core value and business conduct of the company mainly emphasises on

the importance of supporting the people. As McDonald's is a service based company, it is
important for it to ensure that it support for people and the culture of company also
encourages employee engagement in order to improve its procedures and practices. The
recruitment process of the company is undertaken, keeping in mind the people involved
in business which helps in building the strong foundation of company as well create a
positive and healthy culture (Nguyen, Teo and Ho, 2018). Individual learning- The culture of McDonald's highlights importance of lifelong
learning as it promotes quality, productivity and business effectiveness. The company
offers training and development opportunities by the Hamburger University, global
mobility, internships and the leadership development program. This shows that the
company maintains such organisational culture which motivates the workforce to keep
learning. By the practice of performance appraisals, the company evaluates the learning
and performance of employees so that they can improve their performance as and when
required in order to boost productivity of company (.Peccei and Van De Voorde, 2019). Organisational learning- The culture of McDonald's also supports the organisational
learning. It is aimed to use the learning of individual for the development of
organisational knowledge so that the business can be pushed towards high success. This
characteristics is applied by company through programs, policies and meetings which
encourages employee knowledge sharing and employee feedback. This also results in
employee engagement, thereby contributing in employee retention due to creation of
positive and healthy working environment (Pham, Hoang and Phan, 2019).
 Diversity and inclusion- the policy of human resource of McDonald's provides that the
diversity and inclusion is its key factor in the company's culture. The organisation
realises the importance of it in order to optimise the capabilities of HR to deal with
diverse market. The organisational cultural of company encourages suppliers, customers,
employees and franchisees to give their regular feedback and engage in the meaningful
conversation so that business performance can be improved (Ren, Tang and Jackson,
2018).
Human resource challenges faced by the company.
McDonald's is one of leading chain in fast food industry which operates its stores mainly
through franchise model through licensing the brand to other business across the globe.

McDonald's is a hospitality based company which involves direct interaction with its customers
on regular basis and human resource plays a vital role in effective functioning of it. Majorly, all
the i9nternational companies in this sector put a lot of focus and emphasis on recruitment,
training and effective handling of the human resource. It is the key to the strategic and
operational concern of McDonald's. The employees of the organisation are mainly grouped into
three categories, corporate staff, franchise workers and restaurant worker. The recruitment and
training of restaurant and corporate staff is done by the company itself and the franchise workers
are employed by franchisees but the requisite training is provided to them by the company
(Renwick, 2018).
The company faces problem in employee motivation. As compensation paid to
employees plays an important role in motivating the workforce as money has been regarded as
the most motivating factor for people from the ancient time. Low wages leads to low level
employees which is a major challenge in company as it leads to low satisfaction level and high
employee turnover. The low level of compensation results in low quality of service which is
offered to customers as the workers are the one who have direct interaction with customer and
their low level of satisfaction can cause heavy impact on the operational quality of company
(Shen and Zhang, 2019).
Another challenge faced by McDonald's is in terms of training and development. As the
company provides training to all its employee, it sometimes become difficult to handle all the
three categorised workers. The restaurant and corporate staff are given training by the employees
but the main problem arises for giving the training to franchisees workers as their employment is
done by franchiser but the training is given by company. It becomes difficult for the company to
manage the training hours and place for the people. It also involves heavy cost for the
organisation to train all its workforce (tewart and Brown, 2019).
McDonald's also faces challenge in terms of maintaining its positive and healthy
organisational culture where the company engages in continuous individual learning and takes
help of individual learning for building the organisational knowledge. The main challenge arises
in terms of arranging the individual learning which involves high time, cost and effort of the
company (Tooranloo, Azadi and Sayyahpoor, 2017).

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that human resource management is an essential
practice in an organisation which involves recruitment, selection, training, development,
performance and reward management and many other. McDonald's is a leading fast food brand
which undertakes all its HRM practices in an effective manner. It follows its core values and
belief which states to support the people engaged in the company. There are different HRM
practices which involves recruitment and selection, performance appraisals and reward
management which have its own strength and weakness in order to motivate the workforce to
give their best to the organisation. Motivation is the key to employee retention and motivation.
Further it is concluded that the company have the organisational culture which includes people
centric, individual and organisational learning and diversity and inclusion. There are many HR
challenges faced by HRM of McDonald's which includes motivation to employee and training
and development.

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