None of us is as good as all of us

Operations calendar 2012; HR trainings, especially on succession (career) planning for restaurant crew and management and our annual crew satisfaction survey; Update on food hygiene procedures; Digital: from e-learning for our crew to the roll out of order technologies for our guests like our Easy Order Kiosks; Restaurant finance updates; Workshops on effective communication and how to plan well for restaurant peak hours like lunch time. All this in parallel sessions and workshops in German and French: it was really a busy week for our restaurant managers and assistants.

And it was challenging for my colleagues and me to organize, especially finding the right balance of information, interaction, training and motivation. Even when you have a total of about 800 (!!) years of McDonald’s experience together in one room, the need to align, to learn, to refresh is always very high. And it’s so important: our restaurant teams give their best every day, so that we turn our vision into reality: “being the Swiss favourite restaurant experience, serving good food fast”. This is a tough job, when you imagine that a typical restaurant manager in Switzerland has to lead and train a team of 50 to sometimes even more than 100 crew members and is responsible for everything from the budget, ordering & storage, restaurant maintenance, product quality and hygiene and of course to ensuring our guests a just perfect service.

But my really favorite moment this week was about celebrating success together and saying “Thank you”. It’s important to value good results and say thank you for special achievements . So we gave out 13 different awards to those, who did a very good performance in the last year in their restaurants. The award “Outstanding Performing Team” went to Emmanuelle and her team from Yverdon Centre Commercial (on the picture with our Operations Director Rajiv Khanna, HR Director Gabriela Leone and me). Very special for me are also the awards that celebrate a special commitment. And I am really proud that two restaurant managers out of my market were awarded with the “I’m lovin it – Service Award” (for an extremely high level of service commitment to our guests) and the “Ronald Award” (to value a very good job of integration of the restaurant in the local community). 
And celebration didn’t stop after the award ceremony, we had great evenings together as a team.  It was a great meeting and team building and everyone now returns to his or her restaurant with a lot of new info and hopefully also great motivation – than we will achieve our goal.

Thanks for following me this week and if you have questions, I would love to hear them!