Friday, January 22, 2010

Human Resources Management in McDonald’s


After short introduction about McDonald’s it’s time to write a little bit about Human Resources Management in this company.
Different types of organisations adopt different approaches to the control of their workforce, depending on how they compete. There are three main bases for competitive advantage-innovation, quality and cost-whereas strategies revolving around quality and innovation are usually associated with a committed workforce. For organisations where costs are the most important part of the question, ‘control’ is likely to be a more important factor than commitment. Although some level of consent is always necessary, control is high on the agenda at McDonald's. Control at McDonald's is not merely achieved by direct supervision, machines, the physical layout of the restaurant and the detailed prescription of rules and procedures but also through recruitment.
Even unskilled workers have some power to disrupt the efficiency of the operation by withdrawing co-operation from the production process, disrupting the process or by simply leaving the organisation. Employees may submit to the authority of the employer, but are always likely to retain a strong interest in the use of their labour. Employees and management are, therefore, to some extent interdependent; management cannot rely solely on coercion or even compliance to secure high performance, management also needs to secure active employee consent and co-operation.
When workers' efforts are extracted through an elaborate systems of rules, including rules about grounds for promotion and for punishment, employers arguably establish more control over workers' personalities and values than when their efforts are extracted through direct exhortation or force or through the design of equipment.
Questions of subjectivity are not separable from the analysis of actual work practices in interactive service work because employers actively manage workers' identities. Workers and customers vie with management in a three-way contest for control and satisfaction. Distress felt by workers subjected to organisational exploitation of their feelings and personalities; however not all workers resist the extension of standardisation to their inner-selves. Rather, many attempt to construct interpretations of their roles that do not damage their conceptions of themselves. In some situations service routines provide workers and customers with benefits which help account for their frequent acquiescence in managerial designs. However the routinisation of service work and the standardisation of personality are benign, nor do workers, customers and employers necessarily benefit from these processes in a happy congruence of interests. These manipulations are often invasive, demeaning and frustrating for the workers and sometimes for the customers who experience them.
The importance of emotional labour in interactive service work, even of the limited kind found at McDonald's, should not be underestimated. Employers who standardise the service interaction exert a cultural influence that extends beyond the workplace. For example when workers are estranged from their own smiles the company is laying claim not just to physical motions but also to their emotions. Their organisational control strategies reach deeply into the lives of workers, encouraging them to take an instrumental stance towards their own personalities and towards other people. McDonald's employees working on a till, for example, although only involved in limited service interactions, are expected to control themselves internally by being pleasant, cheerful, smiling and courteous to customers, even when customers are rude and offensive. This applies to all McDonald's workers and their relations with fellow workers and supervisors, with whom they are expected to show obvious pride in their work and employment.
When asked how they motivated employees, both UK and German managers at restaurant and senior management level stressed the importance of good communication. Managers are encouraged to apply and concentrate on 'motivators': 'achievement', 'responsibility', 'growth' and 'recognition'. This may take the form of 'employee of the month' awards, day trips and cash bonuses or of encouraging workers to strive for promotion and take on responsibility.
On the one hand, the striving for promotion locks managers' and employees' loyalty into the system; on the other, it may offer real opportunities for advancement which may be hard to come by for those with poor academic backgrounds. Managers are encouraged to discount the importance of 'hygiene' factors, such as pay and conditions of work. Managers have no control over these issues because they are dictated by the system. Training reinforces the view that pay and conditions do not really matter; what really does matter is their 'positive' management style and leadership. Job satisfaction is thus defined as a phenomenon determined through the area of psychological concepts, not through good pay and conditions. A good manager will therefore 'solve' the problem of resistance or discontent through good communication. Managers in the UK refer to the three Cs (in Germany, the three Ks), co-ordination, co-operation and communication, as the basis of the solutions to all problems.
Identification with the restaurant and other crew members is fostered through the creation of a new form of collective. If 'us and them' is still recognised, it is reinterpreted to mean 'us' as the management and crew and 'them' as the customer. Workers are encouraged to think of themselves as part of a team and managers are encouraged to equate restaurant management with coaching a team. The result of this form of 'teamwork' seems to be that individuals are often loath to be seen by their peers as making extra work for other people by not doing their share. Even the more resentful employees, who had what management saw as 'negative' attitudes, would still work hard to keep the respect of their peers. A typical feature of management style was the repeated use of certain kinds of language, with paternalistic expressions such as the 'McDonald's family'. Management and employees in both countries used the term to describe their work environment. Many responses reflected the strongly paternalistic nature of the employment relationship which management worked to foster.
There were examined the organisation and the nature of the work in the McDonald’s restaurants, the employment relationship and the characteristics of the workforce in various countries. The detailed study of the German and UK operations and additional evidence from other European countries suggests that virtually the same kind of restaurant hierarchy and organisation is in use in every country. Although there appeared to be some differences in the numbers of workers employed in restaurants in different countries and differences also in labour turnover, this could be explained by a broadly similar employment 'strategy'.
Various authors suggest that all of these workers have something in common; they are unlikely to resist or effectively oppose managerial control. In effect, McDonald's is able to take advantage of the weak and marginalised sectors of the labour market, in other words, young workers who lack the previous experience, maturity and confidence to challenge managerial authority and foreign workers who are very concerned about keeping their jobs. Furthermore, employees in all 'categories' may have no long-term interest in the company, in which case contesting management prerogative may simply 'not be worth the trouble'. Many of the foreign workers in Germany and Austria have a lot of previous work experience and come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and many have qualifications from their country of origin. However, these workers are effectively marginalised in the labour market and find it difficult to find other work elsewhere for several reasons: first, because of problems with language; second, because of problems with the recognition of their qualifications; third, because these labour markets are extremely competitive in terms of qualifications; and, fourth, because the number of foreign and other migrant workers in Germany and to some extent Austria is increasing and unemployment remains relatively high.
The work offered by McDonald's may have some positive elements, but workers are often choosing employment at McDonald's in the context of having few other attractive options. Almost regardless of what people think of the work itself, working at McDonald's could be said to offer advantages for some employees who want flexible hours and are engaged in other activities and responsibilities. For those marginalised in the labour market who have few chances of a job elsewhere, McDonald's offers much needed work.
However, the employees' dependence on McDonald's and/or their tendency to see their employment as a short-term strategy makes them vulnerable to management manipulation. Those with minimum interest simply leave if they do not like it, and this is clearly reflected in high labour turnover. Perhaps they are attracted by the combination of fairly secure employment, familiar 'family' surroundings created by a highly paternalistic approach to management and lots of employees of similar age or temperament. This may help to explain how the corporation sometimes retains individuals who could probably obtain better paid and more skilled work elsewhere.
The employment relationship at McDonald's is managed by a complete spectrum of controls, from simple, direct and bureaucratic controls to the management of subjectivity. At one end of the spectrum, restaurant managers are disciplined to accept tough work schedules and must prove themselves 'up to the challenge' of punishing schedules. Long hours and loyalty are locked in, with young managers being persuaded not only to accept as the norm many hours of unpaid work but also to gain a perverse satisfaction from surviving these tough and uncompromising work routines. In addition, young managers who may or may not get similar 'opportunities' elsewhere in the labour market are romanced by offers of promotion and career development. At the other end of the spectrum, more direct methods are used to maintain control. However, this still leaves unanswered the question of how the corporation has managed to sustain the uniformity of its employee relations practices despite major differences across societal cultures.

Advertisements which encouraged people to work in McDonald's:





And also from Polish media:









REFERNECES:

http://www.mcdonaldsjob.net/

http://www.mcdonaldspraca.pl/
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/companyprofiles/p/mcdonalds.htm
http://gazetapraca.pl/gazetapraca/1,90439,3567161.html
http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/career/crew-page/crew-page.shtml
http://jpkc.szpt.edu.cn/english/article/Human%20Resource%20Management.htm

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Welcome to ... McDonald's!

I tried to give you theoretical basis connected with HRM, now time for some practice. I want to show how HRM works in real company. As an example I chose one of the most famous companies in the world, I’m sure that everybody knows this brand. So… welcome to McDonald’s!
I will start with short history of this company. I think it’s necessary to good understand HRM strategy of McDonald’s.




McDonald’s is a company which has a colorful history and developed the culture associated with the Fast Food Chain today. In 1937, the McDonald’s brother Richard and Maurice opened the first McDonald’s restaurants in America; it was a freestanding business that offered until then an unthought-of concept. The main items they then sold were beef or pork burgers, fries and drinks. Their restaurant were set up differently to the restaurants of those times, with open kitchens the customers could see right through, and counters with many operational cash registers. Under a high degree of customer satisfactory contributed for business expansion, McDonald today has over than 30,000 restaurants over than 100 countries in the world and it has maintained the top position in the Fast Food Industry for the past 50 years.
McDonald’s has been pursuing a growth strategy for the last decade. McDonald’s foreign operations amount for more than half of the company’s revenue today and all have been marked by basic vision of selling the maximum. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the giant experienced problems owing to external environment changes. In 2002, the company experienced huge embarrassment with law suits, negative media coverage, and 15 percent drop in its stocks making it the third biggest loser in the Dow Jones Industrial average.
Among the blows that McDonalds took was the obese-causing and loser-employer issues. McDonalds has been hammered for providing people with unhealthy. Based on figures rising in US and UK, the cultural changes are also taking place, the anti American sentiments in the rest of the world has had negative impact on McDonald’s sales. The biggest challenge that managerial level faced was changing the mind set of the people from being a loser to employees of a growing Company. Even the company strategy announced, not many people were influenced by the McDonalds’ confidence.
To battle it out, a growth of 6-7 percent annual growth which was not much considering the huge size of the food chain was pursued. The challenge was to increase the sales and revenues of the Company and retain its status back. However, the growth had to be reengineered as well, i.e. not from new restaurants but from the improvements in the existing restaurants. Moreover, another factor which drives attention is the destruction of the food market. Due to the growing number of immigrants, the variety of tastes was also increasing and the exotic cuisines from Asia and Latin America were attracting consumer preferences rather than McDonald.
As stated by Patricia Commins in her article, "What McDonald's need to do is consistently drive same-store sales”, a Natwest Securities analyst, counters it with: “The only way in which they can do that is take a long, hard look at their product line." The organizational development focused upon generating revenues from the existing operations. The biggest change is the expansion in the menus based upon the product development strategy and market expansion strategy that wants to follow. The menus now responded to the consumer behavior and included more healthy food items like Happy Meals for adults like salads and fruits. McDonald’s also went on to acquire a few sandwich and coffee chains in UK and Australia. Though these changes were a positive step towards incorporation of consumer demands, but it also put the burger giant in competition with a different set of restaurants like Subway offering fresh salads and sandwiches. In order to increase the market share in mature markets, McDonald’s has innovated ideas like the introduction of gourmet coffee in Australia with coffee lounges and net cafés-the message, a place for high-teens spend their money.
A strong organizational management can build up a good well between strategy and culture, as lead successful corporate strategy implementation; and build up a common goal between employees and organization reaching high level of motivation. Pearce and Robinson states that “the mission must determine the basic goals and philosophies that will shape its strategic posture”. This fundamental purpose that sets a firm apart from other firms of its type and identifies the scope of its operations in product and market terms is defined as the ‘company mission’ Mission is essential for organization to create cohesion, which makes employees have clear direction to meet requirement and loyalty.
A strong organization is an intangible force to maximize the contribution from each member and makes organization going to success. In this article, we will discuss a well-known organization “McDonald Corporate”, how its managerial role plays in their organization, and how their management strategies lead them into businesses.




REFERENCES:

Commins P., McDonald’s US strategy needs new focus, Reuters 20.05.1997

http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/reuter_20may97.html

Pearce&Robinson, Formulation, implementation, and control of competitive strategy, Business Week 1997

Read more: Formulation, implementation, and control of competitive strategy

http://aboutmcdonalds.com/

http://www.mcspotlight.org/company/company_history.html

http://www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/mcdonalds.htm

http://www.mcdonalds.ca/en/aboutus/history.aspx

http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/history-of-mcdonalds-1806.html

http://www.mcdonalds.ca/pdfs/history_final.pdf

http://szybkiejedzenie.blogspot.com/2009/01/historia-mcdonalds.html



What are the functions of HRM?

HRM functions can be dived into primary (directly involved with obtaining, maintaining and developing employees) and secondary (either provide support for general management activities or are involved in determining or changing the structure of the organization).


PRIMARY HRM FUNCTIONS:

1) Human resource planning activities are used to predict how changes in management strategy will affect future human resource needs. These activities are critically important with the rapid changes in external market demands. HR planners must continually chart the course of organization and its plans, programs and actions.

2) Equal employment opportunity activities are intended to satisfy both the legal and moral responsibilities of an organization through the prevention of discriminatory policies, procedures and practices. This includes decisions affecting hiring, training, appraising and compensating employees.

3) Staffing (recruitment and selection) activities are designed for the timely identification of potential applicants for current and future openings and for assessing and evaluating applicants in order to make selection and placement decisions.

4) Compensation and benefits administration is responsible for establishing and maintaining an equitable internal wage structure, a competitive benefits package, as well as incentives tied to individual, team or organizational performance.

5) Employee (labor) relations activities include developing communications system through which employee can address their problems and grievances. In an unionized organization, labor relations will include the development of working relations with each labor union, as well as contract negotiations and administration.

6) Health, safety and security activities seek to promote a safe and healthy work environment. This can include actions such as safety training, employee assistance programs, health and wellness programs.

7) Human resource development activities are intended to ensure that organization members have the skills or competencies to meet current and future job demands.



SECONDARY HRM FUNCTIONS:

1) Organization/job design activities are concerned with interdepartmental relations and the organization and definition of jobs.

2) Performance management and performance appraisal systems are used for establishing and maintaining accountability throughout an organization.

3) Research and information systems are necessary to make enlightened human resource decisions.



REFERENCES:


Bohlander G.W., Snell S., Managing Human Resources, Cengage Learning 2010

Read more: Managing Human Resources


Sims R.R., Human resource management: contemporary issues, challenges and opportunities, IAP 2007

Read more: Human resource management: contemporary issues, challenges and opportunities


Werner J.M., DeSimone R.L., Human Resource Development, Cengage Learning 2009

Read more: Human Resource Development





Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Aims of Human Resources Management:

The overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the organization is able to achieve success through people. As Ulrich and Lake have remarked: “HRM system can be the source of organizational capabilities that allow firms to learn and capitalize on new opportunities”.


Specifically, HRM aims to:

  • enable the organization to obtain and retain the skilled, committed and well-motivated workforce it needs,
  • enhance and develop the inherent capacities of people: their contributions, potential and employability, by providing learning and continuous development opportunities,
  • develop high-performance work systems that include “rigorous recruitment and selection procedures, performance-contingent incentive compensation systems, and management development and training activities linked to the needs of the business”,
  • develop high-commitment management practices that recognize that employees are valued stakeholders in the organization and help to develop a climate of cooperation and mutual trust’
  • create a climate in which productive and harmonious relationships can be maintained through partnerships between management and employees,
  • develop an environment in which teamwork and flexibility can flourish,
  • help the organization to balance and adapt to the needs of its stakeholders (owners, government bodies or trustees, management, employees, customers, suppliers and the public at large),
  • ensure that people are valued and rewarded for what they do and achieve,
  • manage a diverse workforce, taking into account individual and group differences in employment needs, work style and aspirations,
  • ensure that equal opportunities are available to all,
  • adopt an ethical approach to managing employees that is based on concern for people, fairness and transparency,
  • maintain and improve the physical and mental well-being of employees.



REFERENCES:


Armstrong M., Strategic Human Resource Management. A Guide to Action., Kogan Page Ltd 2008

Read more: Strategic Human Resource Management


Becker B., Huselid M., Pickus P., Spratt M., HR as a Source of Shareholder Value: research and Recommendations [in:] Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 31(1), Spring1997

Read all article: HR as a Source of Shareholder Value


Ulrich D., Lake D., Organizational capability: competing from the inside out, John Wiley and Sons 1990

Read more: Organizational capability: competing from the inside out



Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Soft or hard? – that is the question...

There are two versions of Human Resources Management:


The hard approach to HRM emphasizes the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing the headcount resource in as ‘rational’ a way as for any other economic factor. It adopts a business-oriented philosophy that emphasizes the need to manage people in ways that will obtain added value from them and thus achieve competitive advantage. It regards people as human capital from which a return can be obtained by investing judicially in their development. Fombrun quite explicitly presented workers as another key resource for managers to exploit. As Guest comments: “The drive to adopt HRM (…) is based on the business case of a need to respond to an external threat from increasing competition. It is a philosophy that appeals to managements who are striving to increase competitive advantage and appreciate that to do this they must invest in human resources as well as new technology.” He also commented that HRM “reflects a long-standing capitalist tradition in which the worker is regarded as a commodity”.

The emphasis is therefore on:

  • the interest of management,
  • adopting a strategic approach that is closely integrated with business strategy,
  • obtaining added value from people by the processes of human resource development and performance management,
  • the need for a strong corporate culture expressed in mission and value statements and reinforced by communications, training and performance management processes.


The soft model of HRM traces its roots to the human relations school, emphasizing communication, motivation and leadership. As described by Storey it involves “treating employees as valued assets, a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high quality (of skills, performance and so on)”. It therefore views employees, in the words of Guest, as means rather than objects. The soft approach to HRM emphasizes the need to gain the commitment – the ‘hearts and minds’ – of employees through involvement, communications and other methods of developing a high-commitment, high-trust organization. Attention is also drawn to the key role of organizational culture.

The focus is on ‘mutuality’ – a belief that the interests of management and employees can, indeed should, coincide. It is therefore a unitarist approach. In the words of Gennard and Judge, organizations are assumed to be ‘harmonious and integrated, all employees sharing the organizational goals and working as members of one team”.


It has, however, been observed by Truss that ‘even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is often hard, with the interests of the organization prevailing over those of the individual”. Research carried out by Gratton found out that in the eight organization they studied, there was a mixture of hard and soft HRM approaches. This suggested to the researchers that the distinction between hard and soft HRM was not as precise as some commentators have implied.



REFERENCES:


Armstrong M., Strategic Human Resource Management. A Guide to Action., Kogan Page Ltd 2008

Read more: Strategic Human Resource Management


Fombrun Ch.J., Tichy N.M., Devanna M.A., Strategic human resource management, John Wiley & Sons 1984

Read more: Strategic human resource management


Gennard J., Judge G., Employee relations, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2005

Read more: Employee relations


Guest D.E., Human resource management - the workers' verdict [in:] Human Resource Management Journal, Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006

Read more: Human resource management - the workers' verdict


Storey J., Human Resource Management. A critical text., Thomson Learning 2007

Read more: Human Resource Management. A critical text


Truss C., Gratton L., Hope-Hailey V., McGovern P., Stiles P., Soft and Hard Models of Human Resource Management: A Reappraisal [in:] Journal of Management Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007

Read more: Soft and Hard Models of Human Resource Management: A Reappraisal



Sunday, January 10, 2010

Introduction to HRM

From the last post we know what HR is, now it’s time to explain what Human Resources Management means. Again I would like to rely on some definitions of this term:


Human Resources Management (HRM) :


“Administrative activities associated with human resources planning, recruitment, selection, orientation, training, appraisal, motivation, remuneration, etc. HRM aims at developing people through work.”


(www.businessdictionary.com)


“Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers. Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training.”

(Susan M. Heathfield, www.about.com )


“Human Resources Management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the to the management of organization’s most valued assets: the people working there who individually collectively contribute to the achievement of its objectives. The main features of HRM are:
  • an emphasis on the strategic management of people (the human capital of the organization) which achieves ‘fit’ or integration between the business and the HR strategy,
  • a comprehensive and coherent approach to the provision of mutually supporting employment policies and practices,
  • the importance placed on gaining commitment to the organization’s mission and values – it is “commitment-orientated”,
  • the treatment of people as assets rather than costs – they are regarded as a source of competitive advantage and as human capital to be invested in through the provision of learning and development opportunities,
  • an approach to employee relations that is unitarist rather than pluralist – it is believed that employees share the same interests and employers rather than these interests will not necessarily coincide,
  • the performance and delivery of HRM as a line management responsibility.”

(Michael Armstrong, A handbook of Human Resources Management practice, Kogan Page Limited 2003)

If you want to read this book click here: A handbook of Human Resources Management





Friday, January 8, 2010

Human Resources – what’s that..?

Talking about Human Resources Management requires explanation what Human Resources are. At the beginning I will make an attempt to clarify this term on the basis of different definitions.


Human Resources (HR) :


“The division of a company that is focused on activities relating to employees. These activities normally including recruiting and hiring of new employees, orientation and training of current employees, employee benefits, and retention.”

(www.businessdictionary.com)


“The people that staff and operate an organization; as contrasted with the financial and material resources of an organization. Human Resources is also the organizational function that deals with the people and issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, and training. A Human Resource is a single person or employee within your organization.”

(William R. Tracey, The Human Resources Glossary, CRC Press LLC 2004)

If you want to read this book click here: The Human Resources Glossary


“The department or support systems responsible for personnel sourcing and hiring, applicant tracking, skills development and tracking, benefits administration and compliance with associated government regulations.”

(www.entrepreneur.com)

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Joanna, I am a student of two faculties: pedagogy – social readaptation as well as career and personal counselling, both on Faculty of Educational Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań(Poland). Currently I participate in the Lifelong Learning Programme Erasmus thus I’m studying at Anadolu University In Eskişehir(Turkey). One of courses which I chose here is Communication Management, what is strongly associated with one of my faculties. Thanks to my teacher of this lesson, I have an opportunity to create a blog connected with subject that I’m interested in. I decided to focus on Human Resources Management. I hope that my blog will be interesting for you.
Have a nice reading! :)