How McDonald's Germany keeps their employees happy with help from Flip
Around 65,000 employees in 1,425 restaurants across Germany
161 nationalities
1.66 million guests per day
McDonald’s really needs no introduction. The crew members serve up Happy Meals and ‘feel-good’ moments in the restaurants every day.
McDonald’s Germany knows how important its crew members’ satisfaction and well-being is for delivering delightful customer experiences: ‘Empowering our people’ forms the foundation of its corporate strategy. But it’s also subject to the macro forces most businesses across the world are facing: Worker shortages and lagging digital infrastructure for frontline employees.
That’s where they enlisted Flip to help. As the technology behind their new MyPeople App, Flip has helped McDonald’s Germany to:
Overcome language barriers
Thanks to the one-tap live translation function for chats and posts.
Digitalise the employee life cycle
Including onboarding processes, learning platform integration, and employee opinion surveys.
Save time and reduce inconvenience
Crew members can view their rota and upcoming shifts directly from the app.
’The crew at the restaurants shouldn't be the last to know about new products.’
Keeping employees up to date with company developments is an important part of ensuring that they feel comfortable and valued. But internal communication can pose challenges in a large, complex company, and there’s the risk that employees only find out about a new product when a campaign is launched.
Why was this happening? There was previously no centralised communication channel for the crew. Instead, information was circulated via restaurant managers or news on the noticeboard.
The training programme and crafted training courses didn’t always reach the crew either. As rotas were printed and pinned on the noticeboard, employees would often call into the restaurant or drive to work on their days off, just to find out when they were next working. Luckily, that was about to all change.
‘The MyPeople app is a quantum leap forwards in informing all restaurants and employees at the same time.’
Franchisee
McDonald's Germany
Towards ‘a new way of leadership’
To overcome these organisation-wide challenges and deliver on the strategy of ‘empowering our people,’ McDonald’s Germany envisioned an easy-to-use app that would allow them to:
- Establish a direct, secure communication channel with all employees
- Digitally display rotas
- Provide ongoing training, on-demand
- Facilitate knowledge-sharing among employees
Why McDonald's Germany chose Flip to power the MyPeople App:
- Stringent privacy and security standards: Flip uses ISO-certified European data centres, is 100% GDPR-compliant, and requires only minimal personal data. This combination wins it the trust of frontline employees and the approval of even the strictest security professionals.
- Easy-to-use app: Crew members can find everything they need in just a few taps in an intuitive, social media-like app that reflects the McDonald’s Germany brand.
- Inclusive communication: McDonald’s Germany employs workers from 161 nations. One-tap translation is essential for bringing everyone into the conversation.
- All-in-one interface: Crew members can access all the tools and info relevant to them, all in one place — without needing to log in to multiple systems.
- Accessible training: The McDonald’s Germany Learning & Development team can digitally deliver training to new and existing crew members, making it faster and easier to upskill their workforce.
‘The MyPeople app is a quantum leap forwards’
Instead of one-way communication, employees now share knowledge and best practice with each other. Rather than top-down updates from the Service Center, crews can get local news from nearby restaurants and from branches further afield. Information isn’t just stuck to a noticeboard, but sent directly to employees' smartphones – where they can interact with and comment on it. And interact they do; McDonald’s Germany now sees a more than 90% participation rate on their annual employee survey, giving the team at headquarters real insights, directly from the floor.
Key features employees are loving:
- Newsfeed
- Channels
- Group Chats
- 1:1 Chats
- Reactions and comments
- Surveys
‘We also send employee surveys through the app. The results help us make data-driven decisions.’
Franchisee
Happier employees, happier guests
Since the launch of the MyPeople app, McDonald’s Germany has seen a significantly improved Net Promoter Score (NPS) in the annual opinion survey. That means more employees who are likely to stay with the company, recommend it to others, and contribute to its positive culture – a big deal in an industry where 38% of roles remain unfilled (source: Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft).
What the MyPeople app makes possible:
- Knowledge exchange & best practice sharing: Employees proactively optimise processes and share what works across locations.
- Accessible onboarding and upskilling: Employees can access training in the digital learning platform
- Dynamic communication: Everyone can reach each other instantly to exchange news and ideas.
- Live rota view: Employees can see an up-to-date rota, no matter where they are.
- Employee feedback: With surveys, managers can quickly find out who prefers the early shift, and who likes working late.
‘We have big things in store for the app’
The MyPeople app rollout is well underway, with the final stages expected to launch in 2024. Then, McDonald’s Germany will be able to reach up to 65,000 employees in real time with just a few clicks. The finishing touches include updates to the rota functionality; while employees can already view their rota digitally, the aim is to make this more interactive so that crew members can also use the app to update their availability and request annual leave.
The MyPeople app is intended to accompany each employee across the entire employee lifecycle – from getting to know the team and their ways of working during preboarding, to providing an exit questionnaire to any departing team members.
‘The app gives employees everything they need to do a good job every day.’
Thomas Großmann
Manager Employer Reputation & Engagement McDonald’s Germany McDonald's Germany
Before
- One-way communication
- Crews unaware of new product launches
- Paper rotas printed out and pinned to noticeboards
Now
- Dynamic, connected conversation
- The right people get the right info – at the right time
- Rotas can be accessed from anywhere
About McDonald's Germany
McDonald's was founded in 1940 by the two brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald and further developed by Ray Kroc into the best-selling restaurant concept. In 1971, McDonald’s opened its first branch in Munich. More than five decades, 1,450 restaurants, 199 franchisees, and 65,000 employees later, McDonald's Germany is the market leader in fast food restaurants.
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