Human Resource Managemant/Mcdonalds Corporation

To determine if McDonald’s has competition when it comes to having a business that is profitable and where diversity and career opportunities is what help put McDonald’s way ahead of the competition. The article McDonald’s Corporation describes McDonald’s as the world’s largest restaurant chain and has been in business since 1948 where Dick and Mac McDonald opened up McDonald’s Bar-B-Que restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

Ray Kroc, the man who made McDonald’s a household name became a franchising agent for the McDonald’s brothers in 1954 and opened his first McDonald’s in Illinois in 1955.

The brothers sold the company to Ray Kroc in 1961 for 2. 7 million. Revenues reached a record high of 22. 8 billion in 2007. According to its website, McDonald’s is the leading global foodservice retailer with more than 32,000 local restaurants serving more than 60 million people in 117 countries each day. More than 75% of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by independent local men and women.

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I will examine if McDonald’s is truly a company that has a strong HR methods in order to stay on top. 1) What should McDonald’s do to further reduce turnover and improve its HR management? According to the article, McDonald’s turnovers have decreased from 170% to 130-135%. They have developed hiring tools that reduce subjectivity in the selection process and weed out poor prospects with a questionnaire that the applicant fills out that correlates well between high scores and future success.

They estimate that they receive over 1 million applications a year.

According to the textbook Human Resource Management by Anthony, Kacmar, and Perrewe, companies like McDonald’s should us the incremental approach when faced with a high turnover rate. The approach include increasing wages by $1 per hour, implementing career tracks and promotions for all employees, increasing benefit packages, and allowing for a more flexible work schedule. This step-by-step method could be used to determine whether a step affects he turnover rare and is and would be less costly (pg. 119). I think that because McDonald’s is a fast food restaurant, their turnover will tend to be on the high side because the majority of their employees are teenagers to people who are in their early twenties and may be in college. Most of the teenagers can only work during the summer and on weekends and this could also be why their turnover is so high. McDonald’s would need to have a better training and development programs for its employees.

According to the textbook, a decision regarding training and development involves the extent in which the firm will train and develop employee’s verses hiring already well-trained and developed persons (pg. 266). With a company as large as McDonald’s, they could continue to train the employees that they have in order for the company to continue to grow and to make their turnover decrease even more. They could also encourage creativity among their employees and this would help to develop and market new products and ideas (pg. 266). McDonald’s would also need to improve its recruitment tactics.

According to the article, McDonald’s periodically uses employment applications as placemats, while this may be an ingenious idea, most people really don’t pay attention to a paper placemat and the placemat will eventually end up in the trash. With technology being as it is today, McDonald’s does have online applications on its website for corporate opportunities, restaurant opportunities, and internships Depending on the job that is posted, McDonald’s could recruit from the inside to fill positions this would help to fill positions that are posted as well as give an employee an opportunity for growth within.

They could also recruit from the outside for fresh new ideas. McDonald’s would also have to improve on retaining their star employees by being a company where people want to work, selecting the right people from the beginning, making the employees feel welcomed, and a commitment to continue to train their employees for the better (pg. 212-213). McDonald’s can improve its HR management by making sure that HR has the best employees to perform as an HR should. HR should make sure that a job design is implemented for the quality of work life for employees (pg. 240).

Each employee should have a job description that details what it is that they are to do on the job. HR should also have objectives in place as well. This will ensure that better integrations among functional areas such as training and development objectives would be geared toward and integrated with production, sales, and skills needed (pg. 112). HR should also make sure that the job design they have in place is one that will help and keep their employees motivated. The job design should include job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, work teams, and autonomous work groups (pg. 47). These designs will help the employee to be more active in their job responsibilities as well as help them to develop more skills in other areas that they may not be familiar with.

What would also help McDonald’s reduce turnovers is to implement a mentoring program if they don’t already have one. According to the textbook, mentoring is a guide or knowledgeable person higher up in the organization to help a new employee “learn the ropes” of the organization and to provide other advice (pg. 80). I think that a mentoring program would help McDonald’s to keep employees that are star quality employees and that are not just at work to make a paycheck and would also give the employee an opportunity to move up in the business if they chose to do so. 2) As McDonald’s continues to expand internationally, discuss the many HR issues that may arise and how the company may manage differences in culture? Diversity internationally would be an issue that many arise for HR.

According to their website, embracing and empowering a diverse workforce has been a part of the McDonald’s culture for decades. In the mid 1970s, then McDonald’s CEO, Fred Turner, developed an initial diversity framework, and in 1980, the company hired their first official head of diversity. Back then, it was just the right thing to do. Today, it is a business imperative. Patricia Harris is McDonald’s Global Chief Diversity Officer and V. P. of Inclusion and Diversity.

She states that "any company that hopes to serve a diverse customer base across the United States, and around the world, must reflect that same diversity in the restaurants, where we meet our customers face to face, and throughout our organization, where we design our products and services with the distinct wants and needs of our customers in mind. And our business results reflect the validity of mirroring our customers throughout our system very clearly. " Diversity is helping McDonald’s manage differences in culture. According to the article, McDonald’s recently stated that greater emphasis will be placed on the growth of traditional estaurants on an international level. Going international would be an issue for HR. There is a significant difference between domestic and international human resource management. It would seem to be that there are far more variables to consider when conducting human resourced audits and training on an international scale, making it more complex than domestic execution. With domestic HR there is a common standard practice that most companies are familiar with, whereas with international HR, there are a variety of different laws and business practices that international companies have to consider.

Factors such as language translation services, international taxation, international relocation and orientation as well as host-government relations to name a few, are an integral part of successful international HR. With the thought that McDonald’s stores no longer have to carry a standard menu, franchisees can experiment with new items and alter the menu to conform to regional and ethnic taste (pg 631), HR will have to have a strategic plan in place for the diversity of a McDonald’s that is put in a country for example like India. McDonald’s entered into India in late 1990. For thousands of year, India's Hindu culture revered the cow.

Hindu Scriptures state that the cow is gift of the God to the human race. The cow represents the Divine mother that sustains all human beings. HR could possibly find it difficult to sell its menu items because of the cultural food differences that India has. Many of the ingredients that are used in Indian cuisine are Atta (Indian whole wheat flour), Saunf (Fennel Seed), Chana Dal (Chickpeas Lentil), Kesar (Saffron), and Saag (Cooked Green Leafs) as well as lamb and chicken. Some of the people in India are vegetarians so there would have to be a menu that appease their culture with vegetarian dishes as well as the spices that are used.

My question would be what would be the point of having a McDonald’s in an area where they don’t eat beef or pork and your American menu serves hamburgers? I guess the whole concept is for India to have a fast food restaurant that would accommodate their needs. Competition could also be an issue that may arise for HR. According to the article, McDonald’s restaurant compete with international, national, regional, and local retailers of food products and competes on the basis of price, convenience, and service and by offering quality food products.

HR would be in the position to take a proaction approach to this situation. HR could form a strategy in anticipation of a problem that may arise from local competition on an international level (pg. 25). It would be really hard for McDonald’s to compete with a local restaurant in India because most of the foods are prepared fresh but I am sure that McDonald’s did the necessary research to make sure that their plan came to fruition and that there was not a lot of competition that they would have to contend with.

In conclusion, McDonald’s approach to eliminate massive turnovers can be reached with just small, simple steps. Mentoring as well as training and development are also the key in helping to keep the turnover rate at a low level. Taking McDonald’s international is a positive move for the business with the exception of international taxation, international relocation and any other international issues that may arise because of the cultural differences but with the right extensive research and developing produces that will meet cultural differences, any McDonald’s would be a good business avenue.

With McDonald’s being a company that is well known, HR must make sure that any differences that are relevant to opening a McDonald’s internationally will be met to make sure that diversity is shown in their operation. I’m sure that McDonald’s would love to have its golden arches throughout every continent on the planet and with the right HR relations, I sure that it could be possible.