15.2.98

Quest for 5,000 to feed the multitude

Lynn Meade, head of human resources at McDonald's UK, is responsible for 40,000 workers in the fast-food industry

MONDAY starts as most weekdays do, with getting ahead of the morning traffic from Crystal Palace to arrive at our North London headquarters by about seven so I can spend a quiet hour in the staff gym before getting down to the serious business of the day. I certainly need all the energy I can get at the moment, given the start to the year we've had.

The New Year began with our announcement that we are creating 5,000 new jobs in the UK as a result of plans to open around 100 more restaurants in 1998. At the same time we unveiled plans to raise pay rates for our hourly-paid employees.

These announcements reflect the early part of my week. Monday sees a meeting to review the internal announcement of the new pay rates. Communicating this to the 40,000 employees affected is quite a logistical exercise.

As well as the normal posters, memos and managers' briefings, we've decided to follow up giving each employee a postcard confirming the new hourly rates.

Recruiting 5,000 new people in the UK this year may also sound like quite a tall order, but for us it's really a case of business as usual. We recruited about the same number last year, so we have plenty of research to call on into what works for us and what doesn't.

One thing that has worked well is our livelier, more fun style of recruitment advertising. Part of Tuesday is spent reviewing the new creative approach for this year's campaign with Barkers, our recruitment advertising agency.

I also manage to find time during the day to put in a few calls to some of our restaurant managers, to see how the pay increases have gone down. This is part of more formalised feedback which the HR department has been carrying out since the increases came into effect. However even the best reports are no substitute for hearing the views of some of our line managers first hand.

Wednesday includes a meeting with our diversity development manager, Susan Lax, to discuss the launch of this year's scholarship programme. This is a scheme where we encourage students working with us who are going on to full-time education to apply for a bursary of £1,000 towards their studies.

It's a really popular idea, especially given some of the current changes to student funding, which saw us give away £36,000 to our student employees last year. We also hope that some of the winners will be our trainee managers of the future, joining the ranks of the 200-plus graduates we recruit every year in the UK.

We also meet Sir Herman Ouseley of the Commission for Racial Equality, with whom we are regularly in touch on matters of best practice employment.

We take the whole issue of diversity in the workplace extremely seriously and work closely with organisations like Business in the Community and the Employers' Forum on Disability. In fact, our chairman is also the chair of the EFD.

Wednesday also means time for a wonderful dinner with my parents, although the next morning's session at the gym is firmly on my mind by the time we've finished eating.

Thursday brings an interesting meeting with an American, Dr Marc Muchnick, who is writing a book called Naked Management. In it he expounds his latest management theories, and he wants to use McDonald's as a case history, which we're happy to assist with. One to watch out for on the bookshelves later in the year.

It's also time to begin planning our industrial placement programme for the next academic year. We offer year-long student placements covering a variety of disciplines.

Right now we're just at the stage of researching internally which departments want to take placement students, for which type of assignments and identifying which colleges to approach in plenty of time before September.

Thursday evening and great news as one of our ads scoops a Reed Business Information Recruitment Award!

Friday involves a welcome telephone conversation with Jeanette Roe, our head of training, to discuss the impact of the recent accreditation of our management training scheme by Nottingham Trent University.

As well as providing certain exemptions for the university's degree programme, our restaurant managers will receive a diploma in management upon completion of their training. This is a great endorsement of our programme.

Thankfully, on Friday afternoon I avoid the long haul back through the traffic to Crystal Palace as I've managed to book a rare long weekend away out of the country.

I'm off to Spain, but manage to call in at our Heathrow restaurant to have a chat with the manager there. I also visit one of our restaurants when I'm actually in Spain. You find yourself doing this an awful lot when you do what I do for a living.