Employee Training Goes Digital
Onboarding is a costly process for any company, especially one as vast as McDonald’s Corp. But by transitioning a paper-based operation to a digital one driven by smart devices, the fast food giant is slashing training time in half.
It’s important for retailers and quick-service restaurants to expedite training to onboard customer-facing associates. However, printed training and policy and procedure manuals are not only difficult to distribute among McDonald’s 14,500-plus locations across the United States and more than 1,000 in Canada, but also keeping learning and operational content current is an increasingly daunting task.
Over the last year, the chain set out to streamline the delivery of printed operations and training materials through a digital system that converted information in manuals and binders into dynamic web-based HTML and PDF digitized files. The process, which took between three and four months to complete, solved the issue — but only to a point.
“It solved the paper issue, but it didn’t yet solve a bigger challenge — modernizing training,” explained Jack Sylvester, McDonald’s director of learning technologies.
While it is critical to get its restaurant crew — whether they take orders at the front counter or drive-through window, or work the grills and fry stations — up and running as quickly as possible, too often these employees, and the employees of its independent owners and operators, train for these positions by “sitting in a crew break room in the back of the restaurant, accessing information on a desktop computer through several 35- to 40-minute e-learning courses,” he added. “However, where they were actually learning was with their peers to the left and right of them in the kitchen.”
In June, McDonald’s learning and development design and technology teams parlayed this digitization strategy into a means of driving a more interactive and modern training program — one that fostered shoulder-to-shoulder learning. By working with Inkling, San Francisco, McDonald’s used the company’s cloud-based authoring platform — internally branded as Fred@McD — to create custom dynamic searchable and interactive documents based on HTML5, and open industry standards.
Upping the ante even further, the design and technology teams opted for mobile delivery of content and, “a more responsive, consistent way to deliver bite-sized videos and image-based content,” Sylvester said. “New crew are able to work side-by-side with a restaurant crew trainer, using a restaurant-supplied tablet and modernized training materials, with the goal of becoming more confident and competent in their new roles.”
While employees train, shoulder-to-shoulder, at a station, the software behaves similar to consumer apps that serve up videos, interactive simulations, dynamic forms and checklists. Videos are no longer than 60 seconds in duration, and “the interactivity of images and content aligned with procedures drives a ‘show me,’ ‘teach me,’ ‘let me try’ mentality,” Sylvester said.
To date, restaurants across the U.S. have access to shoulder-to-shoulder crew training, as well as operations manuals and quick reference guides on Fred@McD. One example of the crew training modules is the fries and hash browns station.
The approach and consistency of the content design, and the ability to leverage short videos and interactions delivered shoulder-to-shoulder, “give crew members more confidence and competence in a position in a shorter period of time,” he said.
Training, which used to take up to 14 hours per learner, now takes less than half that time. This reduction in training time allows crew increased speed to proficiency, and the ability to work independently at the station in less time, Sylvester reported.
The web-based solution also enables McDonald’s to update and change content in a faster turnaround. The positive feedback is prompting the company to explore how to expand the program.
“Our intent is to expand usage of the platform globally,” Sylvester added. “We initially deployed Fred@McD across McDonald’s largest market, the United States, and in Canada, and continue our partnership with Inkling and our design teams to design and deliver effective and modern learning across the McDonald’s system.”