The Motivation Analysis Of

McDonald’s Hr Policies Business

Raportaru Diana - Ruxandra

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Human Resource Management (HRM or HR) is the management of human

resources. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an
employer's strategic objectives. HR is primarily concerned with the management of
people within organizations, focusing on policies and on systems. HR departments
are responsible for overseeing employee benefits design,
employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and
rewarding (e.g., managing pay and benefit systems). HR also concerns itself with
organizational change and industrial relations, that is, the balancing of
organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and
from governmental laws.
Human Resources is a business field focused on maximizing employee
productivity. Human Resources professionals manage the human capital of an
organization and focus on implementing policies and processes. They can be
specialists focusing in on recruiting, training, employee relations or benefits.
Recruiting specialists are in charge of finding and hiring top talent. Training and
development professionals ensure that employees are trained and have continuous
development. This is done through training programs, performance evaluations and
reward programs. Employee relations deals with concerns of employees when
policies are broken, such as harassment or discrimination. Someone in benefits
develops compensation structures, family leave programs, discounts and other
benefits that employees can get. On the other side of the field are Human
Resources Generalists or Business Partners. These human resources professionals
could work in all areas or be labor relations representatives working with
unionized employees.
Businesses are moving globally and forming more diverse teams. It is the role of
human resources to make sure that these teams can function and people are able to
communicate cross culturally and across borders. Due to changes in business,
current topics in human resources are diversity and inclusion as well as using
technology to advance employee engagement. In the current global work
environment, most companies focus on lowering employee turnover and on
retaining the talent and knowledge held by their workforce. New hiring not only
entails a high cost but also increases the risk of a newcomer not being able to
replace the person who worked in a position before. HR departments strive to offer
benefits that will appeal to workers, thus reducing the risk of losing corporate
knowledge.

McDonald’s
 Background
McDonald's business began in 1940 as a restaurant opened by two brothers, Dick
and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California. The founding of the present day
McDonald's Corporation dates back to April 15, 1955 when a franchised restaurant
was opened by Ray Kroc in Illinois. Kroc was responsible for leading the
corporation to worldwide expansion. McDonald's became a public corporation,
listed on the stock market in 1965. McDonald's eventually has dominated the fast
food industry for years as the market leader. It is one of the world's largest chain of
fast food restaurants, found in 119 countries with over 31,000 restaurants
worldwide and more than 1.5 million employees. The chain serves about 47
million customers a day. McDonald's primary products include hamburgers,
cheeseburgers, French fries, soft drinks, breakfast items, and desserts. It has
recently added to its menu coffee, salads, wraps, and fruit. McDonald's earns
revenue in several roles as a franchiser of restaurants, operator of restaurants, and
investor in properties. Nearly 15% of McDonald's restaurants are owned and
operated by the company directly. The remainder of the restaurants, about 85%, are
operated by others through franchise agreements and joint ventures.

 Introduction
Motivation at work is viewed increasingly as being a significant factor in
contributing to a company’s overall success in achieving corporate goals.
McDonald's Corporation, usually called McDonald's by the crowd, which is the
largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants around the world, serve about 68
million customers in 119 countries every day. To support this amazing business,
761,000 employees are working for McDonald's. If referring to McDonald's HR
policies, most people may remember the flexible working time in McDonald's. In
fact, that is just the most famous and a small part of its flexible HR policies. Also,
McDonald's believe they have a flexible HR policy to have a perfect match with its
employees (McDonald's, 2013). The aim of this report is to assess the effectiveness
of McDonald’s HR policy in a business view. This report is going to introduce HR
policy used by McDonald's first. Then, analyze the motivation factors used by
McDonald’s with motivation theories from its HR policy including their
employees’ feeling, and perform a contrastive analysis of McDonald’s HR policy
by comparing McDonald's HR policy with other fast food manufactors’. Finally,
this report will evaluate the effectiveness of McDonald’s HR policy with the
analysis which will be demonstrated in this paper.

 Introduction to McDonald's HR policy

Human is the most important resources of an organization. They ensure the
interaction of financial, industrial, and other resources to the organization can
function. Today, the management experience to realize that the financial rewards
can not only in the category of a staff incentive. Employees need to be considered
as an entity led to the search engines non-financial. There are many engines did not
exist a financial connection with the satisfaction of the needs of employees, such as
recognition of his participation, decided to perform the growth of individuals, and
others .
In the restaurants crew members constitute the entry-level position and are by far
the most numerous. A large majority are part-time workers, roughly three-quarters.
Their wages are low. Swing Managers constitute the first true managerial position
in the hierarchy, although their hourly wages are only slightly higher than crew
member wages. Assistant managers are higher salaried. There is only one
Restaurant Manager per McDonald's restaurant (USA Today, 2012).
McDonald's provide a good future development chance for their employees. More
than 50% of their owner operators started off behind the counter, so did more than
75% of their restaurant managers (McDonald's, 2013).
‘If we are going to anywhere, we’ve got to have talent. And, I’m going to put my
money in talent’, said by Ray Kroc, who built McDonald's into the most successful
fast food operation around the world. McDonald’s official website reveals that
employees who are students can earn up to 46 credit hours toward their 2 or 4-year
degree if enrolling in its management training and education programs. Also,
McDonald's USA National Employee Scholarship Program recognizes and rewards
the accomplishments of McDonald's outstanding student-employee applicants with
scholarships.
Also, as shown on McDonald's official website, McDonald's provides various
benefits for their employees, including competitive wages, MAC Card, Haircut
Discounts, wages increases, McDonald's training programs, life insurance,
education support, direct shares, uniforms, flexible hours, paid vacation, bonus
scheme and stock purchase plan.
  Analysis of McDonald's HR policies

Connections between Business Motivation theories and McDonald's HR

policies
Taylor’s Scientific Management
In Taylor’s scientific management theory, money is assumed as a single motivator.
This theory is trying to determine the most efficient way to perform a task. It
recommends pay by a "piece rate" method based on "fair day’s pay". The result is
that the workers work fast to get bonus (Carla, V., 2008).
In the second part, it is referred that competitive wages are used as McDonald's
payment policy (McDonald's, 2013), which is similar with piece rate method in
Taylor’s scientific management, because workers can get more salaries if they
work harder. However, McDonald's never regards wages as the only motivator.
Free or discounted meals, flexible hours and many other benefits to their
employees are playing motivator’s role, too. Therefore, McDonald's uses a part of
Taylor’s scientific management as their HR policies.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow divided the needs of employees to five classes: physiological
needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualisation.
He separated these five needs into higher and lower levels. Physiological and
safety needs were described as lower order needs, while the other needs are
classified as higher order needs. He thought once each level is satisfied, the needs
at this level become less important (Business Studies, 2007).
McDonald's does not emphasise the lower order needs in their career description.
The reason of this may be that the work in McDonald's is safe, and the majority of
employees in this company consist of students, whose physiological needs can be
satisfied by their families. However, McDonald's emphasise their flexible work
time and experience employees can get from their work. McDonald's has a clear
recognition on their employee’s needs, satisfying their employees with higher
levels in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In this case, Maslow’s theory is being
implemented enormously by McDonalds.
Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
The factors that can motivate workers were categorized into motivators and
hygiene factors by Fredrick Herzberg. Motivators like interest in work and future
opportunities are factors which give workers job satisfaction, while hygiene factors
such as working environment lead workers to be dissatisfied.
McDonald's seems believe that the motivators in Herzberg’s two factor theory can
bring employees satisfaction. The rewards got from great performance and future
development chances are both used to motivate employees by McDonald's.
McDonald's may try to make employees motivated by their work instead of
hygiene factors including salaries.

Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor divided employees to two completely different types. One is
Theory X, standing for people who are lazy, selfish, dislike work and need to be
controlled. On the contrary, people who are Theory Y are able to enjoy their work,
take responsibility if motivated and have creativities or job knowledge. The main
difference between people who are Theory X or Theory Y is if they are motivated
by money or many different needs. Theory X assumes that people are only
motivated by money, but Theory Y has an opposite assumption.
McDonald’s attaches importance to their workers’ motivation generated from
different factors, but wages cannot be the factor. Therefore, McDonald’s do not
intend to attract employees who are Theory X. At the same time, McDonald’s
emphasise its flexible hours again and again as their most important HR policy. If
taking this motivator as one of the incentives for employees who belong to Theory
Y, this factor seems not effective enough. In short, there is no clear links between
McDonald’s HR policies and the Theory X and Theory Y.

3.2 Employees’ feeling in McDonald's

Table 1. Analysis regarding employees
There are 60 respondents which include 60% of male and 40% of female, who are
between 16 to 40 years old. Employees at less than 20 take 70% of this questioned
group. In addition, 74% of them are working for McDonald's as part time
jobholders.
As shown in Table 1, 55% of the employees were strongly in agreement with their
flexible work time. 23.33% agreed with this. Only 3.33% of them were not sure.
Unexpectedly, 18.33% of them have the opposite perspective. This part of
employees may be the full-time workers for McDonald's. Among these 60
employees, more than a half of them were motivated to work as a result of the free
food facility provided by McDonald’s. 28.33% of them were only agreeing with
this. 6.67% of them do not think that they worked for free food in McDonalds. On
the wage rates, 85% of the employees thought the wage rate was not fair. When
employees were asked about their relationship with their employers, majority of
them answered that they deal with their employers not well. Additionally, 11.67%
of them had no clear idea about their relationship. Moreover, if looking at the
reward part, only 13.33% questioned employees almost agreed with McDonalds’
reward system. Majority of these surveyed employees disagreed with this reward
system (53.3%). At the same time, a quarter of questioned employees strongly
disagreed with this.
The data shown above reveals some advantages and disadvantages in McDonalds
HR policy. Most of employees do not intend to take work in McDonalds as their
future career. They are possible to work in McDonalds for flexible work time,
great facilities, and friend-making chances. However, the vast majority of workers
in McDonalds displeased by salaries, employer-employee relationship and reward.

 Competitors Analysis
KFC and Bugger King consider are two main competitors generally identified with
McDonalds. They have different strength on different market segment such as
KFC is the leader company that provide fried chicken and it has a very long history
in the fast food provider. KFC has the secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices to made
it become the most famous in fried chicken. As for Burger King they have their
own recipe for varieties type of burgers adopt any customer's taste. images8.jpg
The Burger King company is considered like the world's largest burger restaurant
chain They have some strength points such as created a good website and at the
Burger King restaurant also sell video game with purchase of a value meal, while
the games are now unavailable in store, is still selling the game through its online
store. But like the other, Bugger King also have some weaknesses like they sell
almost about the burger, customer have no much choice for choosing their foods.
While people are more concerning to healthy and nutrition food, but the first image
of Burger King give to customer is junk food. This image of burger is unhealthy
food.
As part of KFC policy employees undergo several trainings at different levels
before they get promotion . In the same way , the general managers they employ on
their branches must have acquired appropriate training and experience from the
company . Likewise , all franchisers as part of the agreement have to undertake
courses at Yum ! University to obtain familiarity with the culture of the Kentucky.
In this way, both emigrants and immigrants will have the opportunity to
incorporate the culture of KFC and their own culture to suit to the taste of their
clientele. The training employed for both franchise and non-franchise managers are
on the same basis that everyone is required to attend trainings held at the company
's headquarter at Louisville. Likewise , these front line people will take the
responsibility in providing trainings for their employees using training manuals
and product guides. In that way , the top management is assured that the KFC
culture penetrates another culture effectively.

 Awards/Achievements:
 HR Excellence Awards 2009: Best Learning and Development Strategy -
McDonald's Restaurants
 HR Excellence Award 2007:HR Initiative “ The People Project”
 HR Excellence Award 2006:HR Director of the Year –David Fairhust

McDonald's is the dominant brand and the largest growth in fast-food market in
120 countries on six continents. McDonald's works with over 29.000 stores
worldwide and estimated the total turnover in 2000 was over 40 billion dollars.
Only a few brands can be on par with McDonald's brand strength and the presence
everywhere of the Golden Arches symbol (M-shaped curve in yellow).
However, McDonald's has been rated as the unbeaten brand names - according to
research by Interbrand, the brand consulting company leading the world. The study
reviewed all the changes, step by step development of the leading brands and
offers assessment, estimates the value of each brand. Interbrand has concluded
that: "There is a brand that they could be compared with McDonald's on the idea of
branding, how to make lasting and attractive, it's spreading quickly. McDonald's is
an American brand to conquer the world with the power of two quite different
factors - culture and commerce. " McDonald's start from the United States but has
quickly become popular worldwide.