A McJob holds little interest...even when the chips are down

By Kelly Dyer, Editor of Strategic Communication Management, Melcrum

The fast food giant McDonald's is to create an additional 4,000 jobs in the UK, which is a (Mc)nugget of happy news in an otherwise dismal economic climate. This, they say, is in response to the rising numbers of people who want to eat out but don’t want to pay high restaurant prices.

The news prompted a radio debate on a national station yesterday as to whether you’d be happy to work for McDonald's if it was the only way of staying on top of the rising bills and mortgage payments.

One caller said quite frankly that he wouldn’t be seen dead “flipping burgers and wearing the stupid uniform”. He said he’d be mortified if his mates saw him and he’d feel happier sweeping the streets as a way of paying the rent. He felt this type of role was more suited to elderly people “who no longer cared about what they looked like” or people with learning disabilities.

Another caller had different views. She said she’d been made redundant and had no choice but to take the first job that was offered to her. This was working in McDonald's. She spent 18 months there and said that whilst it wasn’t the most stimulating or challenging position she’d ever had, it was fine and it paid the bills. She also felt the company offered great opportunities for young people entering the job market for the first time and that it was a good grounding for those who wanted a career in retail.

At Melcrum’s employee engagement conference in May, Jez Langhorn, head of talent and education at McDonald's, spoke to delegates about the challenges the company faces trying to keep engagement levels among staff high, especially when the external perception of the company seems to be so poor.

And they must be doing something right. They’ve gained a number of awards including "The Times Top 50 Places Where Women Want to Work" in 2007, "50 Top Great Places to Work" in 2007 and "Best Place to Work in Hospitality" in 2008. So maybe they’ve hit the jackpot when it comes to engaging their staff, but it seems they still have some way to go before the general public comes round to a similar way of thinking.

Comments

[Graeme Ginsberg]

The term “McJob”, coined in the mid-80s and spread, for example, via Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X, is currently defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an "unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector".

I read a snippet in the paper yesterday that McDonald’s has been formally petitioning dictionaries to change their definitions of the term. This isn’t a new thing. In 2003, for example, Jim Cantalupo, then CEO of McDonald’s, sent a letter to various media organisations dismissing the term as "an inaccurate description of restaurant employment" and calling it “a slap in the face to the 12 million" fast food industry's staff.

In the article I read yesterday, the McDonald’s spokesperson pointed to a poster campaign they ran in April 2008 by way of support for the argument.

The campaign (see initial press release at xyz), involving a series of posters rolled out in the company’s 1,200 UK outlets, outlined benefits of working at McDonald’s, each poster closing with the phrase “Not bad for a McJob”. According to the press release, the aim was “to turn the negative connotations of a McJob into positive ones and set the record straight”.

Playing on the “Mc” prefix, examples of posters included:

- McProspects - over half our Executive Team started in our restaurants. Not bad for a McJob

- McOpportunity - two pay reviews in your first year. Not bad for a McJob

- McFlexible - two pay reviews in your first year. Not bad for a McJob

The press release quoted some very impressive facts about the McDonald’s workforce that I wasn’t aware of. For example:
* Last year McDonald's became the first large employer to achieve the new Investor in People Profile status.
* 80 per cent of McDonald's restaurant management started out as hourly paid crew members.
* One in five McDonald's franchisees started out as hourly paid crew members.
* The average tenure for a McDonald's restaurant manager is 10 years.

A couple of things strike me about this about reputation and the nature the language we use in, and about, the workplace.

1. This is a very bold reputation strategy
This poster campaign was certainly extremely bold. They weren’t challenging people to stop using the term “McJob” (because the premises behind the term were incorrect), but encouraging people to coninue using the term with a totally opposite meaning...

This sort of brand strategy was adopted in the 1990s, for example, by car manufacturer Skoda, a brand which had been considered a joke in the UK but was well respected in Eastern Europe. The advertising showed people looking pretty foolish when they wrongly assumed that the great car in front of them could never be a Skoda. After the advertising, Skoda sales grew by more than a third.

Marmite is another example of “acknowledgement advertising”, pursuing a very vibrant, fun advertising campaign that plays on the fact that people are divided by the taste --- those that love it, love it and those that dislike it, loathe it. We laugh at the adverts when the characters mistakenly eat it, grimacing and gurning to War’s chugging rock anthem “Low Rider”.

2. Work may not be a laughing matter
Those who were working at Marmite before the advertising probably didn’t take much offence that some people really loathe the product. Why should they – they were making a quality product that customers loved. I’m sure the advertising didn’t convert Marmite-haters to Marmite-lovers. It acknowledged the polarised tastes and had some fun promoting awareness of the product.

Those who were making Skodas when it was the brunt of jokes, however, probably found the joke wearing a bit thin after a while. At the end of the day, though, they always had the great reputation in East Europe and I’m sure the good qualities of the products and business successes were well broadcast around the company so they felt good about their company and the work they did. After the advertising campaign, I imagine Skoda employees said “Who’s laughing now...?”

The McJob joke is llike the Skoda joke but on a whole different scale. Whereas Skoda was for a time a common joke in the UK, 'McJob' is far more ingrained — hence the entry in the dictionary. The question is, “Is it possible to get the phrase taken out of the dictionary or change the definition to something positive?”

I suspect not. McDonald’s can petition dictionaries but dictionaries are guided by common usage. And McDonald’s can’t petition every user of language! At the same time, with a definition so ingrained, people will likely continue to use the term, even if when pressed they say, “Yes, I know McDonald’s isn’t really like that”. It’s just the way language is used. A ‘Hoover’ refers to any vacuum cleaner, an ‘iPod’ to any music file player and I would think would continue to be the terminology even if those companies went out of business.

3. An audience too far?
I'd be very interested to learn to what extent McDonald’s achieved its poster campaign's aims of “turning the negative connotations of a McJob into positive ones and set the record straight”.

It seems like it’s having great success with its internal audiences (as those impressive employee retention facts quoted in the press release attest to). It may be having great success on the internal/external ‘border’ (where people are hovering, contemplating coming to work at McDonald’s) -- indeed, just how successful it is here might be shown in this new 4,000 person recruitment drive. However, if it’s hoping to change the perceptions of the global, external audience, it probably has quite a McJob on its hands...

Graeme