Case Study: McDonald’s Restaurants

McDonald’s is the world’s leading global food service retailer with over 37,000 locations in over 100 countries. Behind their Golden Arches is a global community of crew, farmers, suppliers, franchisees, and countless others who make up who they are as a brand. The entire McFamily makes McDonald’s what it is today and what it’s been for over 65 years. They serve the world some of its favourite foods - World Famous Fries, Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, Chicken McNuggets and Egg McMuffin.

Culture Excellence has been working with McDonalds since 2019, assessing their Food Safety culture.

A few words of wisdom and reflection from Bizhan Pourkomailian, Global Food Safety Restaurant &Distribution, McDonald's Restaurants.

Our culture is about sharing, and working in partnership with employees, partners and companies such as Culure Excellence. We want to see the hidden areas that can contribute to improving our culture and continue to emphasise that ‘together we are better’.

With 40,000 restaurants around the world, we have to make sure we have a positive and effective culture. We need to be aware of micro-cultures in different departments, countries, and other groups. So we need to see the commonality and also the differences, because food safety touches everything to a greater or lesser degree.  

With the data we have gained from Culture Excellence, we can see areas we have improved and areas we can still work on to become even better. We are focusing in on the behaviours to see where we can improve, always considering collaboration and micro-cultures, and people’s different needs and priorities. And we are looking at where we can reach out to different departments to gain their help and support to meet our business goals and drive the culture we want in a positive way.

Empathy is key. We need to understand what drives people and what their concerns might be. It’s at this point that we start building bridges, between the culture we want and the culture that already exists. And then this is where equity comes in, to help us get people to cross the bridges that we are building. We need to look at resources, needs and priorities to enable this to happen. To have happy people achieving good business goals.

Self-checking is vital to see if we are going in the right direction, and the tweaks we need to make. This is not an overnight journey, it’s happening over many years, and we need to check in with surveys to see the kind of difference we are making, and to make sure we are going forward. A happy employee means a happy customer. Are people’s needs being met and is the culture they have aligned with our business culture, and making a positive contribution.

It's not simple or easy. But by opening our eyes, removing our walls, and building these bridges, we can move forward together. 

Reference: Campden BRI (2024), Culture Excellence 10th Annual Seminar