CASE STUDY: McDonald’s UK measures benefits of implementing employee centric HR technology

HR technology to improve the experience of front-line teams and deliver business efficiencies, agility and innovation

Challenge

McDonald’s is one of the world’s largest fast-food chains, serving over 69 million customers daily in over 100 countries. They are one of the UK’s biggest employers with over 136,000 people working in its network of over 1,300 franchisee and company owned restaurants.

McDonald’s UK were using an outdated version of a tier 1 HR system, based on on-premise technology. With upgrade costs mirroring those of an overhaul and significant frustration in the business, the time was right to go to market. The incumbent system offered a poor user experience by modern standards, particularly on mobile, and there were significant limitations in functionality. Most challenging was the ongoing and unpredictable cost of change which was unpalatable in a Franchising environment. Excessive management time was being wasted and staff were frustrated with poor user experience.

elementsuite solution

As part of their wider strategy to embrace the power of digital technology, McDonald’s UK needed to replace this legacy HR system. They needed a solution that was:

• Mobile first, intuitive and easy to use
• Self-service, automating process and eliminating paper records
• All inclusive, with ability to access all information in one place
• Flexible enough to accommodate the differing needs of Franchisee organisations
• Provide real time alerts, dashboards and analytics to target action and deliver insight
• Nestle at the heart of a sophisticated people technology landscape

After an extensive review of the HR software market, McDonald’s UK selected elementsuite as their partner for delivering a new digital HR platform named ‘MyStuff2.0’. The main criteria for selecting elementsuite was that it needed to be intuitive, easy to use and mobile friendly.  elementsuite was able to offer choice and flexibility, to replace the legacy HR system, integrate with 3^rd party Workforce Management, provide Payroll outputs for all Franchisees, automate paper based Performance Reviews and provide structured orientation training.

In addition, the system was highly branded according to McDonald’s requirements – featuring a responsive design for use on all mobile devices, and including federated authentication and single sign on (where users can sign on with their social media accounts) and integration to other systems via a flexible landing / navigation page.

Big Bang implementation

Modules implemented:

Results

elementsuite delivered on time, to budget due to the power of its inbuilt delivery methodology, and the strong partnership between the McDonald’s and elementsuite project teams. Go-live was achieved pre-COVID-19 with an overnight “Big Bang” deployment across all 1,300 restaurants and 200+ Franchisee operations following a pilot in 50 sites.  End users rapidly adopted the system with over 30,000 unique log-ins achieved on peak days.  This high level of usage was enabled by the intuitive user experience with in built Help and Support including ‘how to’ guides and videos.

Significant process improvements, cost savings and staff engagement have been achieved since implementation.

Some of the other business benefits associated with the project included:

• Reduction in total license and service costs
• Reduction in 90-day turnover of staff
• Only one username and password required for People Systems (single password technology)
• 90% of surveyed employees described they user experience as “Good” or better
• All areas of the system accessible by mobile device
• Improved handling of sick leave
• A wider range of responsibilities within the system can be securely delegated to others
• Significant reduction in the number to support calls
• Improved method of delivery for payroll files reducing time, costs and errors

COVID-19 and legislative changes

Since deployment, the COVID-19 crisis meant that system changes had to be rapidly implemented to accommodate changes in UK legislation, and to support the furloughing of a large proportion McDonald’s workforce, along with the reporting of the necessary absence and payroll changes. Owing to the agility and flexibility of the elementsuite platform, these changes were seamlessly designed, built, tested and deployed in rapid and continuous release cycles to support the changing profile of the workforce.