Stefan Stern, a journalist working for the Financial Times reports receiving an indignant letter from David Fairhurst, senior vice-president and

Stefan Stern, a journalist working for the Financial Times reports receiving an indignant letter

from David Fairhurst, senior vice-president and chief people officer in northern Europe for

McDonald's, the global fast-food chain. It invites its recipients to sign a petition as part of a new

campaign to get publishers to change the current dictionary definition of the word 'McJob'.

Open your dictionary today and you will probably find a McJob defined as 'an unstimulating,

low-wage job with few benefits, espcially in a service industry'; or 'a McJob requires little skill,

is often temporary, and offers minimal or no benefits or opportunity for promotion'.

In the light of this you can understand Mr Fairhurst's objections because, in the UK at least,

McDonald's has established a pretty solid reputation as a decent employer. It features regularly

in most of the main good employer league tables, and recently won The Caterer and Hotelkeeper

magazine's Best Place to Work in Hospitality award. Eighty per cent of McDonald's UK branch

managers joined the company as hourly paid crew members, as did half the company's executive

team and, compared to some other companies in the service sector, McDonald's is serious

about training and development. It is also more female-friendly than most: 40 per cent of

managers and 25 per cent of the company's executives are women. So here's the paradox:

you can get a hamburger and milkshake at your local McDonald's but, on this evidence, you

will probably look in vain for a McJob.

People based in the US may think that this curious semantic battle sounds a bit familiar, and

they would be right. In 2003 Jim Cantalupo, McDonald's then-chief executive, lambasted the

11th edition of America's distinguished Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary for publishing

another downbeat definition of the McJob, and there were even threats of legal action, which

came to nothing. One aspect of McDonald's complaint was that they actually had a scheme

called 'McJobs' − a training programme for disabled people. Nevertheless, the word and its

unsavoury definition remain in English-language dictionaries to this day.

Attempting to turn back a linguistic tide is futile. Dictionaries reflect contemporary usage −

they describe rather than prescribe, and as Dennis Baron, a professor at the University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in 2003: 'if lexicographers allowed individuals or pressure

groups to dictate definitions, then our language would be reduced to mere McWords'.

The American psychologist Frederick Herzberg once said: 'If you want someone to perform a good

job, give them a good job to do.' However, that is not always easy in an era of automation

and efficiency, where employers deliberately seek − often unwisely − to simplify and de-skill

certain jobs.

But what should managers expect from their front-line, customer-facing staff if they want to

avoid the disgruntlement and disillusion of those condemned to carry out repetitive tasks?

Lyn Etherington, a director of Cape Consulting, which advises businesses on their customer

service, says that some companies go wrong at the recruitment stage.

She argues that you should 'recruit for attitude, train for skills', as Archie Norman [former

chairman of the supermarket group Asda] put it. There are some people who will never be

suited to a customer-facing role, but if you want to beat the competition by offering superior

customer service, it is no use management over-designing people's jobs, which minimises the

opportunity for staff to respond to the individual customer's needs. She then argues that there

are 5 key conditions for achieving good customer service.

1. clarity within the business as to what the customer experience is supposed to be;

2. is that purpose regularly reinforced by managers, at daily briefings and team meetings?

3. is good customer service measured and rewarded; people notice who gets promoted

and 'who gets on' Ms Etherington says?

4. does the idea of customer service fit in with other organisational priorities; if all the talk

is of cutting costs, don't expect customer delight?

5. does the business present itself to customers in a seamless way; hard to achieve when

technological advances (and cost savings) tend to fragment the organisation?

However, it can be argued that McDonald's must be getting something right. In January it

reported its best results in 30 years, with fourth quarter net profits more than double those

that were achieved 12 months earlier. Moreover, the company has managed 44 consecutive

months of sales growth, and is pulling in 4m more customers a day than it was four years ago.

Nevertheless, McDonald's seems to be doomed to be controversial, and questions will always

be asked about its management style and working conditions. Jerry Newman, a professor at

the University of Buffalo, who has just published My Secret Life on the McJob, his account of

14 months spent undercover as a fast-food industry employee, concludes that the McJob isn't

McEasy. There are good managers in this sector, but also a lot of toxic and destructive ones.

Source: Stern, S. (2007) Financial Times, 20 March

1. What are your attitudes to the likely nature of work at McDonald's or similar firms

(some of you might actually have worked for firms like this)?

2. In your view (or experience) is McDonald's the excellent place to work at that is

claimed for it in the case material, or does it have characteristics that are nearer to

those claimed for it in dictionaries?

3. If there is a difference between the picture portrayed in the dictionaries and your own

views or experience, why and how do you feel that the firm acquired its unsavoury

reputation?

4. Carefully examine the five key conditions for achieving good customer service set-out

by Ms Etherinton in the case material. Do you feel that observing these will make a

firm a more pleasant place to work, or are they simply geared to ensuring that it is

more profitable?

5. Do you feel that McDonald's could have achieved the commercial success reported for

it without having at least some of the characteristics set out in dictionary definitions

of McJobs?