On 20th July 2016, the OUC and McDonald's China announced their strategic cooperation plan, launching the "Plan for Realising the University Dreams of McDonald’s Employees", an academic education programme for McDonald's staff.
Talking about the cooperation over the past year, McDonald's China regional HR manager and head of the McDonald's programme, Peng Jialin, said, "I am deeply moved by the whole process. The problems that have bothered us for a long time are being addressed one by one."
McDonald's China has 2,200 restaurants in China, with 120,000 staff. Staff turnover is high, so each year they employ 50,000 or 60,000 new grassroots employees. These employees come from secondary and senior vocational schools and generally lack experience. How to address training for new staff and help them adapt to their positions as soon as possible has been a problem for McDonald’s. As a China-wide chain, McDonald's has a great number of employees and they are widely distributed, presenting a problem in terms of increasing employee satisfaction and reducing turnover. In order to resolve these problems, McDonald's has consumed a lot of resources and taken various measures. However, the effects have been insignificant and the situation has become even more severe.
In 2016, the Ministry of Education and the All-China Labour Federation jointly launched the “Action Plan for Realising Dreams of Further Education”. According to the Plan, in five years, 1.5 million migrant workers who have a demand for academic enhancement and are qualified to enrol in university will have the chance to receive funding for continuing education. Through online education and other learning means, they can engage in lifelong learning at any time. Upon hearing this news, the heads of McDonald’s China saw a new opportunity. In July 2016, the OUC and McDonald's China agreed to launch the “Plan for Realising the University Dreams of McDonald’s Employees,” which aims to improve the academic and vocational skills level of McDonald’s staff in order to lay a solid foundation for their job promotion. The “Action Plan for Realising Dreams of Further Education” was implemented by the OUC Experimental School. As a special area for the OUC to explore the integration of the "Six Networks" learner development model and carry out the teaching reform pilot programme, the Plan undertakes "experimental and demonstrative" tasks.
It is impossible for any McDonald's employee to enter full-time learning in the long term. The OUC's "Six Networks Integration" learner development model caters to their demands. The OUC Experimental School has set up six management majors and one chain operation major according to the demands of McDonald's staff. In autumn 2016, the School carried out its first enrolment for McDonald's staff and over 900 students were enrolled. In order to ensure that the enrolment was carried out in an orderly way, McDonald's specially formulated a full scholarship support policy for 1,000 outstanding staff. The OUC also offered a 20% tuition discount, applied for subsidies from trade unions in various cities for the staff, and provided low-interest loans. The McDonald's WeChat account set up a special zone to promote the Action Plan, informing all the staff of the enrolment. The staff can register and pay their tuition fees through the account. In the teaching phase, in view of the staff's work schedules, the OUC Experimental School took the initiative to try and break the traditional rule of attending the nationally-set compulsory course exam and to adopt an online teaching model integrating teaching, learning, management, assessment, and services, allowing the students to learn at anytime, anywhere. In order to help the students familiarise themselves with this new type of learning model, McDonald's and the OUC Experimental School organised an opening ceremony for the freshmen in some major cities and gave them the first lesson. They helped the staff become familiar with the online learning model as soon as possible through live video. At present, McDonald's staff can engage in online learning independently. They can seek online consultation from OUC tutors if they have any questions.
A delegation led by the deputy director of the OUC Experimental School visited McDonald's Café during their enrolment activity.
The “Action Plan for Realising Dreams of Further Education” has helped many people pursue their dreams. Xie Jiaju is one of them. He is a manager at a McDonald's in Guangzhou . He was born in Sichuan in the 1990s. Like many other people working outside of their hometown, this 27-year-old young man had many expectations and ideals. He came to Guangzhou six years ago hoping to realise his dream through his own efforts. In just a few years, he has grown from a new worker to a manager. In order to better manage his store and carry out his daily work in an orderly way, he hoped to further enhance his skills. After he learned about the McDonald's “Action Plan for Realising Dreams of Further Education”, he decided to apply for university. He chose to study HR and applied for a full scholarship.
When questioned about his learning experiences, he happily shared them with the reporter. "The online learning provided by the OUC Experimental School is very convenient. I can watch course videos on my phone during lunch and dinner, and even during my scattered breaks." He told the reporter that since he had not learnt for a long time, it was inevitable that he would encounter some difficulties. However, the OUC Experimental School offers distance online Q&A, which has helped him a lot. Over the past year of learning, he has become more confident. He believes that as long as he studies hard, he can graduate smoothly, his life will go to the next level, and the Plan will help me realise his dream. He is one of the beneficiaries of the Plan. There are many other people like him that have benefited a lot from the Plan.
At present, the McDonald's project has achieved significant results, which has not only addressed the company’s recruitment and training problems but also become very popular with the staff. “‘Employment means enrolment.’ This is an attractive slogan for potential staff. Most of the employees in our company are graduates from secondary vocational schools. They welcome the opportunity to receive a college education while at work. Learning while working is very conducive to their career development.” Peng Jialin is very complimentary about the McDonald's project. “This innovative model that integrates college education and enterprise practice is bound to achieve win-win results for McDonald's and the OUC.”
At present, the average number of learning instances for each McDonald's student is more than 80, with each learning instance lasting half an hour. On average, student’s satisfaction is more than 90%. These figures show that the fragmented learning style is very suitable for McDonald’s staff and that the cooperation project has made plenty of progress. Relevant heads of the OUC Experimental School said that they hoped this project could further deepen their cooperation with McDonald’s and cultivate qualified talents for McDonald's through enterprise-university cooperation and the dual-system cultivation model, helping the staff to realise their university dream without being released from production and position.
By Yuan Xiao, http://www.china.org.cn