McDonald’s
Both McDonald’s and Nando’s have a training plan for their managers, but each of them differ immensely. McDonald’s is using gamification, making use of video and board games to train the managers into making decisions, which they would take during their jobs. The simulation helps them make mistakes and learn from them, without the repercussions that would occur if the same mistakes were made during the work. The training also seems to be interesting as the people who tried it started spreading information about it on social media, without any prompting from the company.
The training in itself seems to be pretty simple, while at the same time being fun, easy to do at home or work, relatively cheap and effective. It focuses on giving the employees training for their current job, instead of focusing on the long term development, but that does fit the McDonald’s imago and I imagine that a lot of the employees are not looking for a long term job. The fact that they are planning on doing a game in 3d, however, seems to be a huge step backwards as it adds an unneeded level of difficulty in accessibility, as people need to know how to actually play the game instead of a 2d game, where you just have to click the right spots, the game becomes greatly harder to modify to fit the future needs of the company. Creating a 3d game might even mean that the game requires a graphics card, making it unplayable on most laptops.
The orientation and socialization, on the other hand, are superb in the sense that it allows new employees to have time to learn the basics of work while surrounded by other new employees and playing the game. The fact that everyone has to be physically present in this, unlike in the manager training game, helps people bond with each other, and ask the people in charge questions and actually get good answers. If they had to start by following someone in the work during the 1st day, they would not know anyone else who started the same time as them and would likely not receive good answers if the one in charge of them had to do their own work at the same time.
Nando’s
Nando’s has ingrained it’s mission, vision and values into their training and it has paid off. ”Each restaurant [is] managed by a patrao, which is Portuguese for head of the family” (Pollitt, 2013) and Nando’s has multiple different trainings programs starting from the ten days of on‐site training, which includes training in food hygiene, health and safety as well as Nando’s values. New employees get the orientation and socialization in the same package, while at the same time they get to see how they might improve their career in the firm with the buddy system, for example, where two people called ”buddies” are responsible for training in restaurant. The fact that ”80% of the company of the supervisors used to be buddies”(Pollitt, 2013), should give motivation for self -development in the company.
The training sessions in Nando’s seems to be clear and effective, with a lot of thought put into the process as well as the result. The fact that people that from people who have just started working in the company, to people in higher positions all receive training, must have a positive effect on the family values the company has and must increase the motivaiton as well as the skills of the people being trained.
Sources:
David Pollitt, 2006. Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 14 Issue: 2, pp.19-21
Basics of Human Resource Management 