Communication Barriers in McDonalds: Analysis and Effectiveness Report

This report examines the communication barriers within the McDonald's organization, focusing on the roles of individuals, status, and power dynamics as significant inhibitors. The analysis delves into how these factors disrupt effective communication between managers and employees, impacting customer service and production processes. The report defines key inhibitors such as the role of a person, status, and power, providing examples and justifications for their selection. Furthermore, it assesses the effectiveness of communication within McDonald's, considering both internal and external channels, and rates its overall effectiveness based on the presence of barriers. The report also briefly touches upon the linguistic barriers faced by the company due to its diverse workforce. The effectiveness of communication in McDonalds can be rated a 70 out of 100.

Running head: COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
Communication Barriers in McDonalds
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
The organization and its communication inhibitors:
McDonalds is one of largest fast food chain of America, which was founded in the
year 1940, by Richard and Maurice McDonalds. The company became popular because of its
unique hamburgers and with the growing market, the company had introduced food items like
French fries, chicken items, breakfast items, cheese burgers, milk shakes, cold drinks, deserts,
smoothies, fruits and salads in order to have a competitive edge in the market (McDonald's -
Official Global Corporate Website, 2019). With time, the company has improved their
service and quality of food. They have also introduced the 24 hours service.
Various barriers between the manager and the employees in McDonalds are:
Role of an individual in communication, status of an individual and power of an individual
are the barriers between the managers and the employees in McDonalds. These are the
frequent occurrences in McDonalds. These barriers are mildly disruptive. This kind of
barriers deviate the organization from attaining their goal and also relay its mission and
vision statement. The communication barriers also devastates the customer service of the
company which includes rude behavior from the employees, poor technique of taking the
orders and failure in relaying the order. The process of production also suffers due to these
barriers.
Definition of 3-4 inhibitors:
 Role of a person: Roles are usually defined in relationship to someone else and it
determines the way one communicates with other employees of the organization
(Sage et al., 2014). In some cases employees hide their mistakes from the leaders
because of a bad personal relationship.

2COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
 Status: Status becomes a major barrier in terms of motivation of the employees.
Certain employees of an organization do not talk to others because of their status,
which in turn creates a huge gap of communication and in turn affects the productivity
of the organization (Conrad, 2014).
 Power: Power also becomes a major hindrance to motivation and controlling (Sage et
al., 2014). During conversing, there is often some sense of proclaiming power or
control that is being exercised by a particular individual. There cannot be any
effective communication if power of an individual comes into play.
Table:
The communication example The name of the inhibitor A justification of the selection
of the inhibitor
The employees usually do not
share their ideas or thoughts
with their managers
Role of a person The company faces this
problem and this is because of
the interpersonal skills and also
the relationship between the
employees and the team leaders.
In certain cases, some of the
employees do not interact with
other employees or even the
managers
status The company faces this
problem due to discrimination
of the employees in terms of
status. The employees are
usually deceptive about
conversing with the managers
due to his status.
The managers usually do not
communicate freely with the
employees and do not provide
power This problem is because the
managers make sure that they
portray their higher authority

3COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
the space for the employees to
share their thoughts and ideas
for the betterment of the
organization
and power and in turn do not
consider the ideas of the
employees. Thus, there is a
major communication gap
between the managers and the
employees.
Effectiveness of communication of McDonalds:
The organizational communication of McDonalds are divided into two major parts:
 Internal communication
 External communication
The effectiveness of communication in McDonalds can be rated a 70 out of 100. This is
because in spite of having a good organizational culture and interpersonal relationships, there
are certain barriers and problems the company face due to communication (Swain et al.,
2013). In McDonalds, the flow of information from the higher authority to the lower level is
done vie shift manager who are called the middle managers in order to share information
about a product launch or any new idea (Nichols, Horner & Fyfe, 2015). The employees of
the organization are from various communities. Although there are various communication
barriers due to status and power but McDonalds do not encourage racism and the employees
are extremely comfortable with each other (McDonald's - Official Global Corporate Website,
2019). The employees are trained to deal with the customers, greet them well, take the order
correctly and repeat them for avoiding mistakes. The restaurant manager and the senior
assistant manager communicate with the stakeholders as the company is customer centric and
hence this is followed to provide a better service to the customers. On the contrary, during the

4COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
busy hours, the employees and the managers do not interact with each other and hence they
fail to provide the desired customer service. The organization also faces the linguistic barrier
as many of the employees are from various countries and they cannot speak fluent English.

5COMMUNICATION BARRIERS IN MCDONALDS
Reference:
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Hargie, O. (2016). Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice.
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McDonald's - Official Global Corporate Website. (2019). McDonald's - Official Global
Corporate Website. Retrieved 24 August 2019, from
https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd.html
Nichols, P., Horner, B., & Fyfe, K. (2015). Understanding and improving communication
processes in an increasingly multicultural aged care workforce. Journal of Aging
Studies, 32, 23-31.
Sage, W. M., Gallagher, T. H., Armstrong, S., Cohn, J. S., McDonald, T., Gale, J., ... &
Mello, M. M. (2014). How policy makers can smooth the way for communication-
and-resolution programs. Health Affairs, 33(1), 11-19.
Swain, J., French, S., Barnes, C., & Thomas, C. (Eds.). (2013). Disabling barriers-enabling
environments. Sage.