Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Final Report

on

Training and Development Interventions for McDonald’s

Course: Training and Development (HRM-340)

Section: 02
Semester: Fall 2019
Date of Submission: December 19, 2019

Submitted to-Faseeha Zabir (FsZ)

Submitted by-Group A

Name ID
Anika Nawar (team representative) 1712012030

FazilatunNisa Sayed 1721280030

Asif Kamal Ankon 1721382030

Md. Sakib Raihan 1721362030

Md Mehedi Hasan 1620301030

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Executive Summary
This report is dedicated to the finding of solutions to the loss of profit McDonald’s had while
operating in Bolivia. Firstly we started the report with a brief discussion on the company’s
history, mission, vision, goals, and business models that would give the readers idea about
how their businesses are operated. We followed the ADDIE model to identify the training
needs and the methods of training that would help to solve the problem. We conducted a
Training Need Analysis and found out the reason behind the problem to be lack of knowledge
and skills, so we determined training as a solution. We pinpointed the group of people who
would receive the training, designed the module, and determined the lecture and
demonstration method to be the suitable method to deduct the deficiencies. Lastly we showed
the evaluation of the procedures and an approximate calculation of RoI and the
recommendations for the organization.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 1
Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Training Need Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 4
Training strategy ............................................................................................................................... 6
The Training Intervention: Design and Delivery.................................................................................. 8
Design ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Development............................................................................................................................... 10
Implementation........................................................................................................................... 11
Evaluation of Training Program........................................................................................................ 12
Return on Investment .................................................................................................................. 12
Findings .......................................................................................................................................... 14
Recommendation............................................................................................................................. 14
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 14
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 15
Table of Contribution ...................................................................................................................... 17

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Introduction
This report is related to the world famous fast-food company McDonald’s that has
successfully operated in as many countries as a hundred but failed to earn profit from any of
their stores in Bolivia. McDonald’s is the world’s largest fast-food chain having more than
36000 stores throughout 100 countries including all the continents of the world (our history,
2017-2019).It started its journey in 1948 holding the hand of the McDonald brothers- Dick
and Mac McDonald. It got wide popularity despite being a small business for its 15-cents
hamburger as well as its quick and quality service (History, 2017-2019). The starting menu of
McDonald’s included burgers, fries, and beverages (our history, 2017-2019).

McDonald’s encountered Ray Kroc, a multi-mixer salesman who visited the store to sell
multi-mixers in 1954 when McDonald’s was looking for an agent for franchising (our history,
2017-2019). In 1955, Kroc opened the franchise store in Illinois and in 1961 he bought the
rights of McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers (History, 2017-2019). After McDonald’s
went under the control of Ray Kroc, its menu started getting enriched with newer items and
from 1990 it started its journey internationally (History, 2017-2019).

Vision: to serve food with high quality and uniform way of preparing that will taste the same
as the ones from the origin (our history, 2017-2019). The priority has clearly been the quality,
service, cleanliness, and value that are to be provided by the company (our history, 2017-
2019).

Mission: to be their customers’ favourite place and way to eat and drink (COMPARABLY ).

Goal:

 to serve quality foods in a friendly and fun environment (Boyd-Ragin, 2013)

 to be socially responsible (Boyd-Ragin, 2013)
 to provide good returns to their shareholders (Boyd-Ragin, 2013).

Business Model:

 valuing franchisees, suppliers, and employees (Our Business Model, 2017-2019)

 providing freedom within the framework so that the menu, marketing strategies,
community involvement, and local business management can be modified (Our
Business Model, 2017-2019)

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

The problem faced in Bolivia

In this report what has been highlighted is the organizational problem faced by McDonald’s
in Bolivia. The problem was- going bankrupt in Bolivia and shutting down all of the eight
stores they had there (Schneider, Lack of Marketing Research: McDonald’s closed All Their
Restaurants in Bolivia). McDonald’s started their journey in Bolivia in 1997 and after
struggling with their business for all these years they finally shut down their business there
completely in 2002 (CNBC, 2019). During their fourteen years of operation in Bolivia, they
had a positive start but were eventually led to decline (CNBC, 2019). They faced similar
issues in some other countries like Philippines, Jamaica, Barbados etc. (Simpson, 2019) and
the reasons were almost similar- contradiction of menu to local people’s preferences, lack of
knowledge about economy, rivals, health consciousness of people etc (Simpson, 2019).

Possible reasons behind the problem in B olivia

Even though the business model of McDonald’s seems to give their franchisees the authority
to modify their business process and menu based on the local preference they still struggled
to keep their business going. The possible reason we identified was lack of knowledge about
the market demand, the economy of the country, and the local and foreign rivals in the market
before they decided to operate in that country. Hence we tried to come up with training
modules that would remove such knowledge deficiency and solve such problems so that they
don’t have to face such problems in future. To prepare the training module, we followed the
ADDIE model that will cover the entire process from training need analysis to evaluation of
each of the parts of training.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Methodology
This report was prepared solely based on the data collected from secondary sources and our
own analysis of the problem. The type of data used was mostly qualitative. Some like the
dates, financial data, outlet numbers were quantitative in nature.

The sources from which these data were collected are available online. These sources are
mostly-

- Articles, journals published on different websites or online news portals

- McDonalds’ official website
- Student-made contents posted on different academic websites
- Video articles published on YouTube

For the theoretical knowledge, we took help from our textbook named Effective Training:
Systems, Strategies, and Practices (4th edition) recommended by our honourable instructor
and the slides provided by her.

All the sources we used for this report are cited and referenced at the end of the report.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Training Need Analysis

Before designing the training module we had to find out the reason for that problem and to
ensure whether or not training is the only solution to that problem (Blanchard, thacker, &
ram, 2010). We also had to find out which groups of people should be entitled to the training
program. Hence in this part, we are showing the Training Need Analysis (TNA) for the
mentioned problem.

The TNA starts with a trigger when the actual organizational performance is lower than the
expected organizational performance (Blanchard, thacker, & ram, 2010). In the case of
McDonald’s the trigger was clear- the decline in sales, hence going bankrupt (Schneider,
Lack of Marketing Research: McDonald’s closed All Their Restaurants in Bolivia).

To specify the reasons creating such a problem, first we had to conduct analysis in terms of
organization, operations, and persons involved in the overall process (Blanchard, thacker, &
ram, 2010). In organizational analysis, we analysed the organizational environment,
practices, mission, goals, and objectives to see if any of these was causing hindrance in the
operation (Blanchard, thacker, & ram, 2010). In operational analysis, we studied the type of
knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitude is required to perform the related tasks so that we
could determine if those were relevant to the goals (Blanchard, thacker, & ram, 2010) and
lastly we conducted the person analysis where we matched the employees’ knowledge, skills,
and abilities with the required ones (Blanchard, thacker, & ram, 2010). From the
organizational, operational, and person analysis, we could see that the problem of
McDonald’s started at the organizational level where objectives, policies, plans, and
strategies are made and was expanded to the personal level where the operation level
employees had lack of knowledge and skills regarding the local cooking styles and
preferences. The main reason behind their failure-

- Bolivian people’s sense of nationalism against American fast-food culture (Fee,

2014). The country’s overall rejection of the big American companies occupying their
market and economy might also be a contributing factor against the dismissal of
McDonald’s.
- Poor economy of Bolivia for which McDonald’s was too expensive (CNBC, 2019)
- Local vendors selling similar food items with better local taste at a lower cost (CNBC,
2019)
- Failure to extract the exact local flavours

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

- Failure to learn about the cooking methods that are accepted in that country (Chetty,
2015)
- Sixty percent of the population of Bolivia belongs to the indigenous population, and
they generally do not prefer to have fast food as they consider it to be unworthy of
their health or money. They prefer a meal to be prepared with love, whole-
heartedness, adequate time and maintaining proper hygiene, which is quite the
opposite for where fast food stands.
- The restructured meat technology of McRib is a mixture of tripe, scalded stomach and
heart, and these pork trimmings are bound together from the protein extracted from
the muscle mixtures. This is served as fresh ribs. The entire idea of this is very
disgusting to Bolivians and rejected by them.

These are the points that the marketing team and product development team should have had
knowledge about so that they could develop the menu and set the prices accordingly. The
mission statement of McDonald’s says that they want to become their customers’ favourite
way to eat but not all the customers would prefer adopting the organization’s food culture.
Hence at times, the organization needs to mould its strategies as per the operating country’s
people.

Since the reason here is identified to be lack of knowledge, there is a need of training and
McDonald’s Marketing team, R&D team, and Operation level workers who would be
involved with cooking and serving are entitled to this training program.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Training strategy
Problem: In accordance with (Ninjaoutreach.com, n.d.), after operating in Bolivia for five
years, McDonald had to shut their business down in Bolivia and the reason behind their going
bankrupt in there was poor knowledge of what the market demanded. McDonald didn’t offer
the products what Bolivian people prefer as a meal. The organization could not perform well
because of lack of knowledge regarding food culture practiced in Bolivia. So, training on
cultural knowledge for the product designing team can be helpful in solving such a problem.
(Ninjaoutreach.com)

Training for whom: Training should be arranged for both local and global workers. But local
workers most probably require less training than global workers.

Locals: Citizens of Bolivia in which they are working.

Expatriates / Expats: Non-citizens of the countries in which they are working.

Home-country national / Parent-country national: Citizens of the country in which

multinational company has its headquarters (Chicago, United States)

Challenges: Local workers have few chances to face problems whereas there is an immense
possibility to face difficulties for the others. Here are some obstacles which may be faced by
expats as well as parent country nationals.

 Personality mismatching
 Family pressures
 Lack of cultural skills
 Culture shock
 Not understanding about liability
 Improper compensation

How to overcome challenges:

1. Adaptability screening: A test that identifies the characteristics and attitudes of

international which candidates should have.

2. Providing realistic preview: Giving ideas about the problems upcoming.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

3. Cultural and language training: Giving cultural etiquette, differences, attitude and
behaviour.

4. Proper compensation: Providing balance sheet approach. Each expatriate should enjoy the
similar standard of living which one finds at home.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

The Training Intervention: Design and Delivery

Design
After careful examination of the situation, we have found out that the reason McDonald’s had
to close down in Bolivia was because of inadequate market research about the way Bolivian
people chose to consume food. It was unexpected and unfortunate for such an international
organization to make such a blunder before launching their franchise

Under these circumstances it will be effective to design a cultural training for the
employees.

The training should be designed for both the management team and the operating trainees.
The management team should be trained mostly through the lecture method about the
Bolivian culture, their lifestyle, expectations etc. (discussed in detail later in the later section),
and the operating staffs should be trained through demonstration and lecture method
(discussed in detail in the later section). This goes for both the local employees and the
expatriates in the particular organization because both are equally responsible for their
downfall.

The design of the training must have the all the necessary components to it. The training must
be prepared in such a way that- “They are to serve the people with a menu which will have
proper cook-time or slow-roasted, unadulterated, pure and wholesome food. The
employees should be trained to greet the customers so that they feel more welcomed,
and the restaurant should be restructured to give a homely atmosphere.”

Here, the three components of training objectives have been clearly pointed out.

Desired outcome: the behaviour exhibited should be to ‘serve’ the customers.

Conditions: “homely environment and greeting the customers so that they feel more
welcomed” are the conditions which are to be fulfilled in serving the customers because
Bolivian people prefer food prepared with love and dedication.

Standards: the criteria for acceptability in this case are that menu which will have proper
cook-time or slow-roasted, unadulterated, pure and wholesome food. This means that the
food prepared should reflect their sincerity and allocation of adequate time. The current menu

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

will have to be restructured to more wholesome food which will increase the nutritional value
of the food. Since fast food is not generally accepted by the Bolivian people, introduction of
rice, salad, baked food, roasted meat could be added to the menu as per the results of the
market research. It is also necessary to check whether the food is sourced and prepared in a
very hygienic manner.

Therefore, the type of standard that we are utilizing here is Quality.

Quality: McDonald’s should ensure that the food is safe, pure, ad unadulterated because Bolivian
people prefer hygienic food prepared with effort and sincerity.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Development
In developing the training method of cultural training, we have to keep both the cognitive and
behavioural aspects in mind. This is described as under:

 Cognitive method:
Straight lectures and discussions:
To inform, teach and to make the employees aware about the various cultural
practices in Bolivia, this method will be effective. The general standards, methods and
type of food they prefer should be made clear to the employees so that they can get a
clear idea regarding the cultural practices of the country.

 Behavioral method:
Demonstration:
To train the employees the methods of cooking the food are to be demonstrated
through this method. Since changes need to be brought in the menu, then teaching the
employees how to cook the meal in the appropriate way are to be covered through this
method.
Again, teaching the employees different body languages such as gestures in serving,
greeting and as such are also needed to be covered through this method of training.

Seating arrangement:

The seating arrangement for the lectures should be circle, since the focus on the trainer
should be higher. In case of discussions, the seating arrangement should be in a semi-circle,
so that trainees can pay attention to the trainer as well as share ideas among themselves.

The training room for straight lectures or discussions should not have many posters or
pictures on the walls, as it can be distracting for the employees. However, the trainer can
bring pictures and posters from time to time to give a clearer idea about the Bolivian culture.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Implementation
Dry run and pilot testing: In conformity with (Pilot testing, 2019) In dry run and pilot
testing, a selected group of end users try the system under test and provide the feedback
before the full deployment of the system. (Pilot testing, 2019)

In other words, it means to conduct a dress rehearsal for the usability test that follows.

Dry run and pilot Testing contributes to find errors in the program. The most common
method of testing is to continuously test the system to point out its weak zones.

There can be errors either design or development or both phases. To ascertain this, a dry run
of the training program is performed before the full one is launched. Dry run should be
performed as much as required.

 It helps to take a better decision on time allotment and resources allotment.

 It gives an opportunity to predict target population's reaction to the program.

 It helps to weigh the success and failure of the program.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Evaluation of Training Program

It is very vital to observe and examine the education program. In case of McDonalds HR
department, they measure the performance outcome of employees after the training program.
The HR manager generally supervises the method. The manager assesses the employees’
overall performance and holds their allotted targets. The line supervisor’s task is to treat their
employees’ performance. The HR performs a consultative role in an organization.

The outcomes of cultural training is measurable, overall performance based and at once
related to the targets of training packages which McDonalds follows. The employees are
supplied with opportunities to use their competencies within the task which they normally
discovered in schooling and the will face several problems while they are on their work place.

Monitoring and evaluating overall performance and progress of the contributors is one of the
important roles. These assessments in McDonald’s are done as summative evaluation.
The purpose of summative evaluation is to improve the performance of the trainees. It is
usually done after the end of the training. It involves collecting quantitative data including
test, ratings of behaviour as well as objective performance measure such as number of
mistakes. (Blanchard, thacker, & ram, 2010). The trainers assist the employees to analyze
major problems quickly and completely and it also help them to build positive attitude
towards the work environment. The trainer can also use remarks from assessment to modify
the content and techniques of training to meet participants’ wishes.
This procedure program is followed

 Pre-training
 Training
 Post-training

Return on Investment
We can use something like this to measure the ROI of our proposed training program:

Investment:
Cost of Training 20000$

Number of Trainee 10

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Cost per Student 2000$

Average total cost of employee per year 45000$

Average total cost per hour 20$

Period of Improved Performance 12

Value of time saved 894$ (Jonathan,2019)

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

Findings
The Findings of our report include the key flaws of the employees of McDonalds and their
possible training solution. We were able to analyze the problems and determined cultural
training program to be necessary to come to a probable solution to the impending problems
they faced in Bolivia

Recommendation
1. Hiring professional trainer to conduct the cultural training program for the company
and its employees.
2. Conducting TNA regularly to analyze the KSA’s of existing and new employees.
3. Considering far transfer training to be necessary for every employee since McDonalds
has a lot of international branch in many different countries.

Conclusion
Since we found out why McDonalds was losing customers and analysed it to be a cultural
issue we proposed a cultural training program to be the training design process. We believe
this is the best solution to McDonald’s problems since they had no prior knowledge of
Bolivian people and their way of thinking along with their food habit. The training program
will enhance the effectiveness of the employees of McDonalds to realize their prior mistakes
and act accordingly since they were ignorant of it before. Kirkpatrick model is best known for
analysing training results. The 4 levels of this model are Reaction, Learning, Behaviour,
Results. (Kirkpatrick, 1996) Through Kirkpatrick model’s behaviour analysis we were able
to discern the differences of the training program and how the employees react to it. The ROI
analysis gave us a very good idea of how it is profitable for the company as well in the long
run. So we can firmly confirm that the overall training program was very effective and the
method of the training design was also accurate in discovering McDonald’s lacking and
thereby coming up with a fruitful training solution.

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Training and Development interventions for McDonald’s

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mcdonalds-bolivia/?fbclid=IwAR3cLdBX2LEqV0apWa61so9n0hSpIPbWfjnt-nBBn-
nr0hplPijDkJkr26U

(n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from COMPARABLY :

https://www.comparably.com/companies/mcdonalds/mission

History. (2017-2019). Retrieved december 11, 2019, from McDonald's :

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Our Business Model. (2017-2019). Retrieved December 17, 2019, from McDonald's :
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our history. (2017-2019). Retrieved december 11, 2019, from McDonald's :

https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-us/our-history.html

(2019, December 4). Retrieved from Pilot testing: www.guru99.com

Blanchard, P. N., thacker, j. w., & ram, v. a. (2010). effective training systems, strategies, and
practices (4th ed.). pearson education, inc.

Boyd-Ragin, W. G. (2013, december 5). Mcdonalds' Objectives. Retrieved december 11, 2019, from
prezi: https://prezi.com/ogngklsv5hxn/mcdonalds-objectives/

Chetty, P. (2015, january 23). Marketing failure of McDonalds in Bolivia. Retrieved december 11,
2019, from PROJECT GURU: https://www.projectguru.in/publications/marketing-failure-
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CNBC. (2019, january 15). Why McDonald's Failed In Bolivia. YouTube.

Deller, J. (2019, 05 11). 5 Easy Ways to Measure the ROI of Training. Retrieved december 13, 2019,
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Fee, M. (2014, july 11). Why Bolivia Allows KFC and Starbucks, but Bans McDonald's. Retrieved
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PLANET EARTHMcDonald’s closing all restaurants in Bolivia as nation rejects fast food. (n.d.).
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Schneider, D. (n.d.). Lack of Marketing Research: McDonald’s closed All Their Restaurants in Bolivia.
Retrieved from NinjaOutreach: https://ninjaoutreach.com/marketing-research-mcdonalds-
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Table of Contribution
Name ID Contribution
Anika Nawar (representative) 1712012030 Training design and development

FazilatunNisa Sayed 1721280030 Executive summary, Introduction,

Methodology, TNA

Asif Kamal Ankon 1721382030 ROI, Findings, Recommendation,

Conclusion
Md. Sakib Raihan 1721362030 Training Strategy, Implementation

Md Mehedi Hasan 1620301030 Evaluation

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