Employability Skills and Professional Development at McDonald's Report

This report examines McDonald's challenges in the labor market, including poor employer branding due to inadequate working conditions, low wages, and insufficient labor policies. The analysis highlights the company's struggles with labor shortages, leading to investigations and lawsuits. The report discusses the implications of educating employees on interpersonal skills, time management, and problem-solving. It provides recommendations for McDonald's to rebrand its image, focusing on reshaping company culture, restructuring labor practices, and building employee engagement through incentives and respect. The report emphasizes the importance of improving employee satisfaction, promoting positive perceptions, and addressing the labor crisis by attracting and retaining a skilled workforce. The report delves into the significance of interpersonal skills in customer service, time management in handling multiple roles, and problem-solving abilities in resolving customer issues. It concludes by suggesting strategies for McDonald's to enhance its employer image and overcome labor shortages.

Running head: EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Employability skills and professional development
Name of Student:
Name of College:
Authors Note:
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EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Executive summary
McDonald’s had been facing a poor employer branding ranking in the labour market due to their
poor working condition, low wage rates and inadequate labour policies. As a consequence of this
McDonald’s had been put to several investigations and lawsuits across the world which had a
negative image on its branding despite holding a strong profitability position in market. Due to
poor employer branding in labour market they have been facing shortage of labour in tight labour
market conditions where even unemployed people do not get attracted to McDonald’s job
advertisements. Hence several reforms are required to deal with situation so that they can
rebrand positive image and build confidence in labour market such as reshaping culture,
restructuring labour practices and policies and building engagement at work and reinstating
values at workplace to win back workers by giving them incentives, recognition and respect.
This will help to build positive perception in employees and win their trust so that situation of
labour crisis can be tackled adequately with employable mass taking interest in recruitment and
even it will influence positive thinking in current employees of McDonald’s which will help
them to retain due to good employer branding.
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Contents
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................2
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Discussion....................................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................12
References.................................................................................................................................................13
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EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
In this report discussion is made on aspects of McDonald’s about their situation in labour market,
implications that are attained through people management by educating employees on
interpersonal skills, time management and problem solving. Also recommendations are made
that will help McDonald’s rebrand their poor employer image and also purposes that will be
attained through this rebranding has been discussed.
Discussion
Analysis for McDonalds' position in the labour market
McDonald’s had been facing high criticism over poor labour conditions, wages and workloads
without overpays since beginning of 2012 throughout the world as the fast food workers had
claimed that McDonald’s gave their workers poor wages, hence workers mobilised various
protests and campaigns across different parts of world to demand that McDonald’s offer better
pays and working conditions. These demands were supported with various bodies of unions,
community groups where workers of McDonald’s organised rallies and strikes to raise voice
against their employer on wages (Shamir 2016). Example to Valax (2012) McDonald’s is largest
employer in Brazil but in 2015 it also held records of being worst employer for maintaining poor
labour rights as stated by Central Trade Union of Brazil. The company gave lot of young people
their first jobs in market but also exploited many with inappropriate labour conditions and rights.
As such McDonald’s came under scrutiny not only in Brazil but also in other parts of world such
as US, Latin America, Europe, China for violating labour laws due to poor pays and working
conditions. According to Clardy (2012) globally McDonald’s had to face several lawsuits and
investigation for maintaining low labour standards and was ranked poorly in labour market
though they had large revenues and profits. Several Workers Union filed complaints against
McDonald’s for unfair labour practices and violations along with charges for tax evasion and
McDonald’s faced immense pressure due to widespread and systematic labour abuses and in
several locations labour ministry formed taskforce for investigating McDonald’s labour
practices.
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EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
As of recently McDonald’s is facing crisis of labour shortage due to drop in unemployment for
instance in US unemployment rate in 2018 reached to 4.1% and as such McDonald’s chains are
struggling to hire and retain workers as many prefer to work elsewhere. As labour is most
significant element of fast food chains like McDonald’s so tight labour market with rise in
minimum wages is making the scenario even more pressing. As such due to low unemployment,
retaining and recruiting capable workers has become difficult and this is more aggravated with
boost of low employee satisfaction rate that is major reason for low retention (Hunter 2012).
Hence McDonald’s due to labour crisis is facing trouble in providing better customer services
and contributions to stores sales. According to Sajtos, Kreis and Brodie (2015) McDonald’s has
been facing this crisis due to their low employee satisfaction rate that had cascaded past few
years due to low wages and poor working conditions as such the brand is associated with poor
labour rating and in tight labour market condition they are facing risk. Till 2017 McDonald’s
year on year satisfaction rate was reported low as compared to other industries in terms of lowest
pays. Further rise of average wages for all workers by 1.5% in industries like Target and
Walmart has further enhanced the pressure on McDonald’s chains in tight labour market
situations so if they want to win they need to make considerable investments for improving their
worker pays, benefits to survive and build their business over labour crisis.
People management implications
The implications of educating staffs on people management in context to the areas of
interpersonal skills, time management and problem solving are:
Interpersonal skills: according to Texier (2013) as interpersonal skills are people skills which are
applied during interactions and collaborations with others so at McDonald’s these skills are
significant particularly in context to soft skills like socialization, receiving inputs, processing
information to add value to customer services. Also responsibility to contribute to the requisite
outcome at work through team work and inter-peer interactions is seen as vital interpersonal
skills at McDonald’s. Example, the front level employees at McDonald’s stores are responsible
to assist customers in their orders and sales of menus so McDonald’s employees are well
groomed to be excellent communicators and have the capability to create a rapport for brand as
well as can persuade customers with choices of orders. These interpersonal skills are cultivated
in employees through workplace experiences and hence are vital at work due to the reason that
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humans live in open system that requires communicating with soft interpersonal skills. The
advantages of interpersonal skills are it helps to promote communication and collaboration
process to perform tasks smoothly without conflicts. These have vital implications to lower
miscommunication, distrust, conflict between workers, workplace politics to improve
productivity at work. So educating staffs of McDonald’s through training on interpersonal skills
will help to build strong performances and success both in their personal and professional lives.
Moreover according to McLeod (2012) strong interpersonal skills will help staffs work well in
teams and interact efficaciously with peers, customers or clients. As such staffs with good
interpersonal skills are perceived as optimistic, confident and charismatic and these attributes
helps to deliver appealing customer service. Contrary if interpersonal skills are not developed
then declines work satisfaction in team environment and employees are unable to support
adaptation to workplace changes, conveys unprofessionalism, reflects poor leadership and more
conflicts and competition among workers can arise in organisational environment thus building
poor workplace atmosphere, culture and undesirable results.
Time management: according to Chakraberty (2013) the time management skills in McDonald’s
employees help them effectively manage their time and priorities as an individual and
professional so that they can self manage their own tasks as well as help others manage
effectively. This is because of the fact that as McDonald’s runs in fast food industry it is
expected from all of their employees to manage multiple roles and stations at same time, so
learning to balance time with priority is important for their employees. As each day there are lot
of important, less important and unimportant activities so Pickle Jar theory can be used to
determine priorities each day to plan tasks in a manner that gives each employees of McDonald’s
spare time to manage multiple roles or focus on other constructive improvement areas. At
McDonald’s employees are trained to manage their time. This can be explained with process of
Pickle jar theory where employees of McDonald’s learn first to put rocks in the jar which
represents highly responsible tasks that are important and need to be done and based on these
other tasks are planned. After the rocks, the jar is filled with pebbles which represent tasks that
can be done by others or can be put on wait. Finally, jar is filled with sand like each day’s mails,
chats, phone calls etc that disappear and can adjust their way between rocks and pebbles. As
such McDonald’s employees are trained to divide their time schedules and tasks in better manner
so that all rocks, pebbles and sand can fit each day in their life as in case of pickle jar theory. So
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with help of Pickle jar concept McDonald’s employees are trained time management which
makes them learn prioritisation of workload by dividing activities as important and not
important. Hence, things that are important as well as urgent are done in priority first while those
that are important but not urgent needs strategic planning and development in long term, are kept
in consideration for long. Specifically where time is limited then both important and urgent but
less important needs to be prioritised (Williams and Adams 2013). Moreover Time management
even helps employees of McDonald’s identify those activities that are often perceived as priority
due to urgency even when not important and those activities that do not actually require to be
done. So good time management helps to lower stress in McDonald’s employees by creating
awareness and identification of priorities, understanding causative factors and applying effective
planning for good execution to avoid delays and stress. If time management and priority division
of task is not maintained then it can create complexity in employees of McDonald’s to handle
multiple roles making them not meet deadlines and creating various distractions in each day’s
activities thus hindering their focus on main tasks and affecting negatively on performance.
Moreover poor time management can create stress due to ineffective work planning and
implementation.
Problem solving skills: according to Mînjina (2015) educating staffs of McDonald’s on problem
solving skills help them identify their own accountability for problem that can be faced during
work and make them solve those through search for answers. Example, front level employees of
McDonald’s can face frustrated customer who might be unhappy with service or menu that is
offered. So, when such dis-satisfied customers create difficulty through aggression then staffs are
McDonald’s need to handle those situations with their problem solving ability. Example during
complex situations employees at McDonald’s are trained to use general root cause analysis tools
like fishbone diagrams to understand the five basic Why’s. In case of complaints or unusual
situations with customers employees try to identify causes by grouping them into categories
which helps them interpret how the causes emerged like they try to indentify general causes or
faults in categories like equipment, process, environment, people, materials etc to identify cause
and effect of problems. This kind of cause analysis helps employees at McDonald’s figure out
questions such as “what actually happened,” “when,” “where,” “why,” “how,” and “so what”
until a possible cause is recognised and the outcomes and relevance is investigated. The
advantage of problem solving skills learnt by staffs reduces distress and perplexity in
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complicated situations. As problems can emerge in all size in regular process to vital crisis
situations, so strong problems solving ability in staffs of McDonald’s help them systematically
think through facts, diagnose the issue, overcome frustration, confusion and misinterpretations
before problems become unmanageable. Moreover as stated by Cohen and Kassis-Henderson
(2012) poor problem solving ability can hamper cooperation and collaboration between co-
workers and management to increase the need for rework thus facilitating inappropriate
developments through lack of insight to problem identification in a proactive manner. This as
whole affects proper planning in place when any deviations are noticed in standard goals or
performance which can be automatically complicate for problematic situations instead of solving
them.
Principal recommendations
Recommendations that can be used by McDonald’s to further rebrand themselves positively as a
good employer to deal with and overcome the labour shortage and poor rankings in labour
market are as follows:
 McDonald’s can make their employees feel proud of the brand which means the
employer they work for by creating working process that can define distinct workplace
culture. The can reshape their values to win employees trust and confidence and can
communicate new set of values to everyone within McDonald’s to make them aware.
Moreover as employees represents brand values so McDonald’s can use their employees
to present values of brand to customers, society and others and in turn reward them
adequately for doing so (Stuart 2012). Hence by improving working practices and giving
their employees enough recognition and acknowledgement for their contributions
towards brand McDonald’s , the company can provide better customer experiences
through improvement of their people factor internally.
 McDonald’s can improve their practices and policies so as to make their company
represent a place where employees would feel like working for long term and would be
proud to associate, which is possible to start with their employees. McDonald’s can
promote in public about how their employee’s efforts contributes to overall success of
business process. This will build engagement at work. McDonald’s can focus equally at
all levels for their employees and not limiting to high level executives only (Peterson,
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EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AlShebil and Bishop 2015). They can build engaging culture and makes their employees
feel worthy by taking them to wine and dine, or on vacations or treating them with
respect to give a sense of significance. These gestures of praise can be given to all levels
including lower level employees to represent thank you incentives for employees and
makes them feel valued which will create positive employer brand and returns for
company. Also regular praise and energy exerted by leadership to make employees feel
happy will bring in change in re-branding McDonald’s.
 McDonald’s can build a culture of niceness that is based on good labour practices and
values where employees are truly considered as associates and not workers for company
and are held important part of success. A culture can be created where it can be
represented that company cares about well being of their people i.e. their employees and
in such culture people are considerate about each other and niceness is prevalent (Roy
and Sarkar 2015). McDonald’s can make their employees feel valued by building a
culture where sarcasm is limited and can makes the workplace happier by doing little
things such as wishing employee’s birthdays, celebrating in occasions, having weekly fun
times that will build niceness culture and rebrand McDonald’s, making employees feel
part of company.
 McDonald’s can even make their employees feel appreciated at work with formal reward
systems to win their loyalty. Further they can provide development and coaching
opportunities for career advancement to make their employees feel interested to remain
within the company for long and work for the brand (Ing 2012). Example giving capable
employees short term projects will build their knowledge, improve engagement and
loyalty. Likewise employees at one location can be sent to other locations to get them
engaged with other projects and even get engaged in training with peers which will help
to boost their experiences. Moreover employees can be given mentoring at work which
will improve people skills and will give them exposure to build relationships with others
at work together by meeting multiple times. This will bring in positivity as well as
learning experiences (Collange and Bonache 2015). Also building open communication
opportunities will help employees interact with management and share their concerns or
ideas more straightforward to build official relationships. These seasoned steps where
employees get time to interact with others will promote healthy culture and give them
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socialisation atmospheres which will help to reshape the McDonald’s brand and boost
positive employer image.
Purposes that could be served for the company if it succeeds
According to Yakimova, Mavondo, Freeman and Stuart (2017) McDonald’s with their employer
rebranding initiatives can get buy-in from their employees by developing value which can win
their satisfaction and loyalty. Hence McDonald’s can win tangible benefits through reshaping
their poor employer image to overcome negative results that occurred due to ignorance of
adequate labour rights and policies. The purposes that can be met through strong employer
branding internally are:
 A strong and compelling employer brand can help to retain talented employees who can
be lost to competitors of McDonald’s due to more wages on offer. Along with adequate
salary and bonus schemes that can be offered to employees at McDonald’s a strong
branding can help them win over as employees these days look beyond just
remunerations. If McDonald’s can successfully build their image and positive reputation
in labour market then they can get an edge over their rivals (Juntunen 2015). This can be
attained by communicating values both among employees internally and to public
externally through potential job advertisements, announcements so that good working
practices and lifestyle benefits like flexible working can be promoted amongst people
which will help to retain and acquire talented people.
 A positive and successful employer branding that is well communicated along with
working practices and policies to the employees will keep them aware about their
expectations and clear their doubts. Moreover clear communication of employer brand
helps to set realistic expectations as an employer and employees as such do not get
misled or frustrated (Bailey, Price, Pyman and Parker 2015). This honesty and openness
will help to retain employees by reflecting positive aspects of McDonald’s and build a
brand that employees would be proud of to get associated with. Moreover understanding
is built when purposes are realistic and this helps to resolve any issues between employer
and employee.
 McDonald’s by rebranding responsible employer image will help to enhance positive
perception that will build good reputation in labour market and they will be able to deal
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with labour crisis by not relying much on recruitment advertisements. McDonald’s strong
employer brand and reputation will serve the purpose of great advertisement tool in itself
that will attract job seekers and they will be naturally inclined to get associated with
company (Jones and Kubacki 2014). Moreover strong employer branding can be used to
leverage and save cost of acquiring talent by allowing potential candidates to register for
new vacancies or alerts over website so that whenever vacancy arises they will be
notified instantly and can submit applications giving way to large pool of talent that can
allow McDonald’s get right match of candidate for job. Moreover good reputation even
helps to retain talent by reducing attrition and saving costs.
 Positive employer branding will help McDonald’s save time by not putting extra efforts
to source potential candidates as they will be naturally interested to get a job in the
company. While in case of negative branding implication is opposite over candidates and
they would be not likely to work with company even if they are unemployed due to bad
image. So positive employer branding builds good reputation that makes candidates get
pulled in and hence time is saved to fill the vacancy.
 As a firm is much more than their corporate website so a positive employer branding will
help to build strong employee experiences that can be showcased in websites of
McDonald’s. So, when a potential talent will consider for a job application they would
read true employee experiences instead of jargons loaded on website which will reflect an
idea of culture at McDonald’s and things that will echo within potential candidates and
will make them interested to work for company. Similarly in case of current employees
good employer branding will help to reverberate human side of company thus keeping
them retained and even communicate positive word of mouth in networks either through
career sites, social media which will help to place a real picture of McDonald’s and will
give a voice to the employer’s brand identity.
 A positive employer branding will help McDonald’s stand out among competitors in
industry which will help to build a consistent publicity in labour market as people will
talk about good brands as well as bad brands. So when McDonald’s will successfully
achieve good branding this reputation can drive to an increase in referral hiring as
employees will speak positively about company and as such McDonald’s will receive god
source of referrals and talented employees. Similarly this also works differently in case
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when good reputation of employer is not maintained. Even in such instances, employees
would spread negative image quickly and new talents might put away from applying to
new roles or current idle roles. As such employer branding is not a passing trend rather it
is something that can directly affect successfulness of business by impacting labour
market and efforts of company to either attract or retain their employees.
Conclusion
Thus from the discussion it is clearly evident that business needs to facilitate good reputation and
brand identity in market so that they do not face any likely labour crisis or bad publicity that can
impact on their business process. Also to build strong internal strength business needs to develop
their employees as they are face of employer brand with help of opportunities in form of training
imparted for development of interpersonal skills, time management and problem solving. This is
specifically significant as it reduces stress among employees and makes them more adaptable to
changes as well as leverages their full potential to self manage their tasks and roles through
effective understanding of priorities, good planning and execution. Also it develops abilities to
work in team and nurtures collaboration that creates a positive working environment and culture
to support a positive employer branding and delivery of desirable performances in areas of job.
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