McDonalds Case Study free essay sample

1. Outline the talent management program that led to success for the company McDonalds is the leading global food service retailer, with more than 33,000 local restaurants serving more than 64 million people in 118 countries each day. More than 80% of McDonalds restaurants worldwide are owned and operated independently. McDonald’s is categorized as a fast-food restaurant that serves mainly hamburgers, fries, and beverages, with the main focus on product and service quality, speed and accuracy. The company aims to continually build its brand by listening to its customers, which results in customer loyalty and in improved communication and awareness. Branding not only creates a personality for the organization but it also represents how consumers view or perceive the organization. McDonalds has done an excellent job of creating a brand and positioning itself well in the eyes of its consumers. McDonald’s has a very welcoming environment, and their philosophy is to be friendly with its customers and to give back to the community it serves. By analyzing detailed information about their customers through continuous market research, McDonalds obtains key information to determine their marketing mix, which include: which products are well received, the prices that consumers are willing to pay, which television programs, newspapers, and social networking sites consumers enjoy, and which restaurants are visited. McDonald’s uses Cost Leadership Strategy in combination with Operational Excellence Strategy. This company is creating value, based on price, combined with customer service. Cost Leadership Strategy allows McDonald’s to keep production costs and customer prices low; meanwhile, Operational  Excellence helps maximize the efficiency of the product development process to minimize costs, but creates a competitive advantage on operational excellence. Employees need to identify and follow efficient processes and engage in improvement practices. 2. Identify strengths of the program and how they led to goal accomplishment The big advantage of McDonald’s is mainly consistency, fast service, quality, and global coverage. This means that a traveler from the U. S. who wants to purchase a McDonald’s product in Asia, knows exactly what he will get. Consistency is very important for a lot of people who don’t like to experiment and by trying different food; that’s why McDonald’s is so successful. Another big advantage of this company is innovation, and listening to people and their needs, and wants. McDonalds staffing strategy consists of priorities, policies, and behaviors required to manage the flow of talent information. First of all, the company has to identify their Vision and Mission in order to hire qualified employees. Those two statements are public and it is each employee’s responsibility to research what the company stands for and if the applicant fits into the culture in order to work in harmony. It is no secret that organizational strategy is linked to market strategy. When a company first begins to move into the global marketplace, it must decide how it will interact with each market. The company could decide to utilize a multinational strategy. This strategy develops products and marketing specific to each national market. It benefits from the ability to quickly adapt to local trends, but it cannot take advantage of scale economies. Companies with a multinational strategy tend to develop a decentralized organizational structure. This structure pushes decision-making down to lower-level organizations. In this way, companies with multinational strategies allow their international subsidiaries to forge their own path in each market (Ghumro, Mangi, Soomro, 2011). A company may decide to develop a global market strategy. These companies use the same products and marketing strategy in every country in which they operate. The cost-savings associated with employing scale economies allow these companies to offer  their products at lower prices. Additionally, lessons learned in one market can be shared with globally. Unfortunately, this strategy prevents a company from realizing important differences in local preferences. These companies develop a centralized organizational structure. Business decisions are made at the highest level and pushed out to all markets (Xiong, Aryee, 2004). McDonald’s Corporation is an excellent example of company with a global strategy and centralized organizational structure. Although these restaurants are typically franchises, they all receive food and packaging from the same approved vendors. This means that a McDonald’s in the U.S. is just like a McDonald’s in Russia. All decision-making regarding menus and marketing are made at the corporate level in the U.S (Hoover’s, 2009). McDonald’s works hard at hiring people who want to excel in delivering outstanding service, but for many teenagers, it is their first job. For all those benefits, high turnover should not be a problem for McDonald’s, since employees do not need to have any specific qualifications, because training will get them through, even though they do not have previous experience. For this reason, the McDonald’s Company would not hire their employees in advance, as other talent-based companies might do. 3.Describe opportunities for improvement in the talent management planning process. In order to keep the competitive advantage, McDonald’s should expand the recruitment process to high schools, since most of the employees who work for McDonald’s are teenagers. Another suggestion would be to keep job postings on their Web page, since the Y generation is very computer savvy, and this is how they search for jobs. The HR department should keep working on benefits they offer and compare them with those of their competitors, and especially listen to employees’ needs and wants. 4. Create at least two (2) more effective approaches to meet the talent management challenges in the future McDonald’s big advantage and attractiveness for young people is promotion within the company, on the McDonald’s website, more than 50% of  owner-operators started behind the counter, as did 75% of restaurant managers. For young teenagers, McDonald’s is a great opportunity, since HR works hard on making sure that the company is very competitive and offers perks to make employees happy; such as, flexible schedule, competitive wages, management training, investment opportunities, and medical and educational benefits. More effective ways to approach talent management would be to go universities to hire new graduated students and also to hire from the internet.