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Gordon's Republic

From McJob to McAlevels

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This is a tough one. My natural instinct is to slate McDonald's every time, without fail, and mostly with good reason, but I find myself slightly torn today reading the news that the burger giant is offering workplace education. It's not a bad idea.
According to all the press reports today the government has given the go ahead for McDonald's to offer accredited in-company qualifications, the equivalent of an A-level.

It's not going to get you into Oxford (although it might get you into somewhere), but the course will train staff in everything they need to run a McDonald's outlet, from marketing to human resources and customer service skills. It is far better that staff in any organisation are given the chance to train and thus improve their skills than not.

That McDonald's is one of the very first to embrace this scheme, alongside Network Rail and airline Flybe, seems almost revelatory. I say almost as we have yet to see quite how this experiment fares, but putting that aside for a moment the move marks a bid by the company to shake over its McJob image -- to shake off the fact that it (and to be fair, as it’s that kind of day, the industry that it is part of) is the epitome until now of what McJob stands for and offers its employees -- low-paying, low-prestige jobs that require few skills and offers very little chance of intercompany advancement.

Now it is offering training that the company hopes will lead to qualifications equal to good GCSEs and up to university degrees. It's backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and it has new deal written all over it. Brown says it will be tough and I hope it will.

If it lives up to the promise that it represents, which is one of social innovation and advancement that is necessary for any leading industrial society to equip its citizens for the future.

A spokesman for the university admission system Ucas said that employer-led qualifications could prove a valuable route into higher education and pointed to the diploma in fashion retail, which is already part of the Ucas tariff.

This initiative is part of an image makeover writ for McDonald's that has this last year had a transformational affect on the image of the business.

There is a big piece in the Guardian today on this. Picking up on the visual retreat of the golden arches and the emergence of "a khaki green cafe restaurant" with Rainforest Alliance certified freshly ground coffee, British organic milk and free-range eggs that are delivered by a lorry powered by biodiesel from recycled cooking oil. And free wi-fi. And couches: a bucket of freshly ground coffee, internet access and a couch? I'd consider going in. That is a big move.

This has led to financial results for 2007 that are expected to be excellent around the globe and, in Britain better still with the chain selling more burgers than at any time since it arrived in Britain 34 years ago.

Part of it is a back to basics, but it is also improving those basics, raising the bar if you will. It certainly needed to. One of the reasons that many would not cross its bright plastic glaring light threshold is because the environment itself was so very alien: like a play word for oversized Lego people.

By the end of last year, 140 outlets had been "reimaged". This year, another 200 will be given what McDonald's calls the "less is more" treatment.

A lot of the UK change is credited to Steve Easterbrook who became chief executive of McDonald's UK in April 2006.

"The business did stall at a time when the society around us was changing as fast as it has ever done," he says. "We had begun to look tired. We hadn't read all the signals that had been sent to us, that to do business in 2007, or more importantly in 2010 and 2020, you've got to act in a different way; you've got to be more approachable."

Read more in the Guardian.

Published Jan 28 2008, 01:47 PM by Gordon Macmillan

Filed under: McDonald's, McJob

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Comments

by Alex Donohue

January 28, 2008 3:20 PM

People will snicker about McDonald's offering recognised qualifications, but this shouldn't be about academic snobbery but offering people who perhaps won't consider university (either for monetary or academic ability) an alternative to the cap and gown. Far too early to say what the return on this will be, but how can an employer investing in its staff be a bad thing? Incidentally, I wonder if this type of scheme is more commonplace in the US than it is in the UK. An American friend of mine told me at the weekend about Starbucks offering employees training and options to put money towards health care programmes.

by martin beswick

January 30, 2008 8:19 AM

A relative of mine worked his way up from a training level at mcdonalnds and now holds a very high position at a very well know construction firm. He always said that the xperince he gained from working his way up has been invaluable and i can understand. They work very hard at providing a service that works very well and given what they have ot put up with i think most people in our industry wouldn't last a month working there. If you can work there and make it you can probably make it anywhere.

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