McDonalds Case

Talent Management

As McDonald’s business performance began to weaken, the company took its first loss in their history in the latter of 2002. Meanwhile, the mangers were receiving exceptionally high performance ratings. However, when leadership roles became available, senior managers had difficulty placing qualified individuals in the position(s). McDonald’s discovered that there was no correlation between exaggerated performance and potential ratings and the overall performance of the company. Therefore, they revamped their talent management system and processes to better identify and develop their employee’s talent to support the goals of the organization.

Silzer and Dowell (2010) define talent management as, a subset of human resource (HR) processes, programs, and tools designed to identify, assess, develop, and retain talent. McDonald’s developed five initiatives to employ in their revamped talent management system. These initiatives included: redesign of the Performance Development System (PDS); global succession planning; implementation of Leader’s at McDonald’s Program (LAMP); introduce McDonald’s Leadership Institute and the Global Leadership Development Program.

First, McDonald’s restructured their PDS to achieve greater accountability for results, improved performance differentiation and acceptance to change and innovation. Secondly, they focused on aligning leadership talent and development with global industry challenges. Next, the company created and implemented a sequence of enriched development programs. The “LAMP” program was intended to develop high-potential talent for future leadership roles. It tackled the competency/skill gaps previous leadership programs failed to address. Later, followed the McDonald’s Leadership Institute and the Global Leadership Program. The leadership institute was established to support leadership talent development by attracting and retaining high