Pushing the flexibility frontiers

McDonald’s has had a checkered reputation as far as employee engagement goes. But in the three years in his role as senior vice president, chief people officer (northern division), David Fairhurst has moved McDonald’s onto the Financial Times Top 50 Great Places to Work. Not bad for a McJob

Your original career path had been towards the church. Do you think there is a link between the job requirements for a career in the church and a career in HR?

I think there are some similarities. Both require leadership skills – having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, and the ability to communicate that to people in a compelling way. Both are rooted in helping people to achieve their full potential. And both have a welfare aspect – supporting people through difficult times.

Even though your brand is one of the most recognised on the planet, how have you improved employee loyalty given the negative perception that McDonald’s has had historically?

Negative perceptions of McDonald’s as an employer are exactly that – perceptions. When I joined the business three years ago the first thing that struck me was the huge gap between these perceptions and the reality of what McDonald’s was delivering for its people. As part of his independent study into the impact of working for McDonald’s on young people (Brighter Futures, May 2006) Professor Adrian Furnham found that when asked whether the job was better, worse or the same as expected, 85 per cent of McDonalds’ employees said their job was “better”. I firmly believe that if we give our people a positive employment experience we can rapidly overturn any negative preconceptions they may have and, in the process, earn their loyalty.

You managed to redefine the McJob myth by illuminating your key advertising site in Piccadilly Circus, promoting yourself as a good employer with the ‘not bad for a McJob’ campaign. Was that a turning point in McDonald’s perception as a brand name?

The ‘not bad for a McJob’ campaign was based on a very simple idea. We wanted to share evidence about what it is really like to work for McDonald’s and let people make up their own minds about the validity of their personal perceptions in the light of that evidence. The impact of the campaign has been very positive, but many of the false preconceptions about our business are deeply engrained and will take a long time to eradicate.

Staff turnover at McDonald’s is at its lowest for three decades. What do you think have been the contributing factors for this?

It’s about hiring the right people – people who share our commitment to deliver an outstanding service for our customers. We have a selection process we call Hire the Smile, which objectively assesses candidates’ attitudinal suitability to working in a fast-paced, customer-focused environment. We are very disciplined in the way we administer this process and it often surprises people when I tell them that three-quarters of the applications made to our business are unsuccessful.

It is about not getting overly distracted by staff turnover. For 25,000 of the 67,000 people that work for us in the UK, McDonald’s is their first employer and many of our employees are students studying at college or university. Rather than focus our efforts on tackling the inevitable turnover, we concentrate on getting the best out of our people while they are with us – which, ironically, has helped reduce turnover.

McDonald’s has an incredibly high response rate in its employee surveys (87 per cent). How do you use the data from surveys?

Our staff survey is just one of a range of research tools we use to both assess the impact of key initiatives on the business, and to gain insights into the employment needs of our people – and I believe that this latter point is crucial. All too often HR departments conduct surveys that merely ‘keep the score’ and justify expenditure. Provided these surveys are measuring the right thing (business critical outcomes rather than HR inputs), that’s fine. But what is also needed is research that sets out to understand employees better and identify the often unspoken needs they may have which are not currently being met.

McDonald’s is known for its willingness to offer flexibility in its working conditions. Can you explain the family job-share scheme?

The Family Contract was launched in 2006 and enabled two people from the same family working in the same McDonald’s restaurant to cover each other’s shifts – with no prior notice or managerial permission.

Also, restaurant crew are able to choose the hours they are available for work in advance, giving them the ultimate in flexibility. Rotas are operated according to a weekly schedule system, and published 10 days in advance giving staff the opportunity to plan and request days off according to their needs. Parents are able to work during schools hours with holidays off, while students can work around college and university, often transferring between restaurants during the holidays.

Do you think there is a skills crisis in the UK?

If we do nothing there will be a skills crisis. It’s going to be down to employers to resolve the issue. Even if the government meets its most ambitious targets for the education system, by 2020 at least four million adults will still not have the literacy skills expected of an 11-year-old and 12 million would not have numeracy skills at this level because they are already beyond the reach of the education system. Government needs to get smarter in the way they make the business case for investing time, energy, and resources in basic skills development. All too often the focus is on long-term benefit, rather than short-term benefits which will hit the bottom line quickly.

Long-term we, at McDonald’s, believe that enabling all of our people to realise their potential will have a positive impact on our talent pipeline. Today, for example, 80 per cent of our restaurant managers started as crew members and over half our executive team started their careers with us in our restaurants. Short-term we believe the confidence people gain when they begin to confront their ‘gremlins’ translates directly into the quality of customer service they deliver and, thereby, into an enhanced customer experience. This can have an immediate impact on the bottom-line.

McDonald’s was short-listed for best large HR department to work in by Personnel Today and the best department for employee engagement, leadership, professional development, reward and recognition. Where do you go from there?

Recognition such as this is a tremendous endorsement of what we are delivering to our people and provides us with even more evidence the preconceptions many people have about our business are unfounded. It’s also very gratifying for our hard work to be recognised by the outside world.

That said, we mustn’t let ourselves be dazzled by awards – and we certainly mustn’t let the winning of awards distract us from doing the right thing for our people or our business.

You’ve said that a business is on shaky ground if the organisation does not live up to its external reputation internally: “CSR [corporate social responsibility] without HR is just PR”. Can you tell me more about your commitment to CSR?

For CSR initiatives to be effective I believe they have to be more than edicts from the boardroom. To be a truly progressive organisation we need to bring those initiatives to life at every level of the business, equipping and empowering our people to do the things that really make a difference.

We are now powering our delivery vehicles with bio-diesel made from our recycled cooking oil. However, if our restaurant staff forget to turn off the air-conditioning system overnight, or operate our cooking equipment inefficiently, all of this environmental benefit will be lost. All of our restaurant managers have access to an energy management system so they can monitor the environmental impact of their store and how that compares with other stores in their area.

Do you think blogging is becoming an important networking tool between management and employees? Is it a good way to gauge what employees really think about the organisation?

The majority of our employees in the UK belong to what is now being referred to as the ‘millennial’ generation – a generation who have never known a world without computers and mobile phones. As a result, it is important that employers look at how they can engage with the younger members of their workforce using the communication channels they are most comfortable using themselves.

I think the success of McDonalds’ employee website is down to the fact that it was designed in collaboration with an online steering group of over 100 of our employees. As it has grown and developed, more of its content has been contributed by, or co-created with, our staff.

When you consider your employee engagement strategy, do you benchmark yourselves against other businesses, either within or outside the industry?

We constantly measure and benchmark the impact of all aspects of our employment practices through a range of methods. Our annual Viewpoint survey directly measures employee commitment. All of our stores are regularly ‘mystery shopped’ and assessed. We have shown that the restaurants with the best scores are also those with the highest levels of engagement. I am vice chairman of People 1st, the sector skills council for the hospitality sector, and our chief executive Steve Easterbrook chairs the CBI’s Education and Training Affairs Committee. This gives us the opportunity to network and informally benchmark our performance against a wide range of businesses both within the hospitality sector and in the wider economy.

What do you think are going to be the biggest challenges in employee engagement over the course of the next decade, not just at McDonald’s but for business generally?

Technology and statutory requirements will result in organisations becoming more transparent than ever before. Employers will be increasingly judged by their actions rather than by their promises. Employers that consistently ‘do the right thing’ for employees, customers, and the wider community will enjoy higher levels of engagement. After all, who would want to commit to an organisation that is shown to be prevaricating or failing to deliver on its promises and obligations?

How did you spend Christmas? Was the Blackberry turned off?

I spent Christmas with my family. And, yes, the Blackberry was turned off... most of the time.