McDonald’s Case Study

By

John D. Robinson

Completed in fulfillment of requirement

for Talent Management in

HRM 532

Submitted on 30 October 2012

Key Words for Library Catalog Submitted to: Business Strategies Prof.
Talent Management Program Course Instructor
Talent Management Process
Talent Management Planning
Developing Talent

Outline the talent management program that led to the success for the company.

In the broadest sense, talent management has been described as “a deliberate and ongoing process that systematically identifies, assesses, develops and retains talent to meet current and future business needs and objectives.” (Wiley & Sons) McDonald’s has taken the steps to put talent management at the core of their overall Global Business Strategy for success. McDonald’s used a broad-scale initiatives approach to development and retain talent and its working!

Reporting their first ever loss in Q4 2002, the CEO resigned and the new CEO stepped in and began to implement a new business strategy to right the ship. McDonald’s leadership understood that in the rapidly changing 21st century business world, the best companies implement and aggressively support any initiative that promotes the link between keeping the best talent and achieving the best results. The initiatives McDonald’s implemented to align their talent management programs with their overall Global Business Strategy are as follows: * Performance Development System Redesign * Redefining key leadership behaviors termed “performance drivers” very much like competencies. Introduction of a new 4 point system vice a 5 point system. A new incentive compensation plan and a revised assessment of potential high performers. * Global succession Planning and Development Process * Design and implementation of the LAMP Program * McDonald’s Leadership Development Institute * The Global Leadership Development Program Each initiative above was specifically designed to develop and retain the best talent. These initiatives have been a resounding success for McDonald’s which as of December 2008 has posted sixty-five consecutive months of positive comparable sales and a stock price well over 50 dollars a share, according to Wiley & Sons.

Identify strengths of the program and how they led to goal accomplishment.

The strength of McDonald’s talent management program is their training initiatives as described above. McDonald’s methodical and distinguished learning and development programs have been extremely successful and align perfectly to their overall talent management strategy. Training that begins by preparing employees to serve customers at the counter, and extends to programs that help individuals launch their own franchise, is a key to McDonald’s 50-plus-year success story. Last year, the company kicked it up a notch with improved restaurant leadership training, sharpened people selection and processes, and refined coaching and mentoring practices (Weinstein, M).

According to Weinstein, M directors and officers have access to leadership development programs and resources designed to ensure McDonald’s leaders have the skills, knowledge, and competencies required to successfully drive strategies and achieve business results.
Finally, McDonald’s talent management initiatives are world class and a definite strength because they: * Align to core business principles and are viewed as an investment * Customer focused * Innovative * Results are proven and carefully tracked
Describe opportunities for improvement in the talent management planning process?

Improving the talent management planning process depends on how we start, on what we focus, and how we define the talent management system an organization will use. The way we define talent management creates the context from which we will find problems, solutions, and measure our success. Many talent management systems become this big system operating in the background. Because the system is bigger than we might think and is ever changing, the greatest risk to our talent management systems is that they become too narrow and process bound.

To combat a narrow and process bound system, we should design our system based on emergence: patterns emerge, arise out of, many simple interconnected parts. Basically, if you start your talent management program by asking the right questions, emerging issue will arise allowing a team of professional to shape the talent management system to address the emerging issues and not treating the system like a hammer and forcing employees to follow unnecessary steps to be retained or grow in the organization.

Create at least two (2) more effective approaches to meet the talent management challenges in the future.

Due to the current economic state in the U.S., McDonalds and many other organizations would be wise to focus on demographics and leadership development. An effective approach to take would be to monitor demographics, it’s common knowledge that a large group of leaders (baby boomers) are on their way to retirement. Increasing your attention to leadership development should pay huge benefits when these leaders began to leave and retire.

Another approach would be to make succession planning a top priority because without strong leadership no talent management system will succeed. Many organizations chase the next big idea but “leading organizations have shown to be more effective at tailoring talent management practices to fit their own business models, then taking a more quantitative, fact-based measurement approach and steadily driving improvements year after year.” (Management Innovation Exchange, pg 1)

REFERENCES
Weinstein, M. (2012). McDonald’s Recipe for Success. Retrieved October 24, 2012, from http://www.trainingmag.com/article/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-recipe-success
Wiley, J., & Sons. (2010). Talent Management , How the world’s leading corporations manage, develop, and retain top talent (2010 Custom ed.) Hoboken, NJ: Quebecor World Versailles
Management Innovation Exchange (2012). Start with a better question to create a better talent management system – The Talent Management Cloud. Retrieved October 20, 2012, from http://www.managementexchange.com/about-the-mix