Safe & Respectful Workplaces
We believe that, as a brand, we have a responsibility to help protect the health and safety of anyone who works at or enters a McDonald’s restaurant.
We are committed to prioritizing safety in all the Company’s corporate offices and Company-owned and operated restaurants, as well as supporting our Franchisees to do the same in the restaurants they own and operate. We work to foster respectful workplaces, where people can be themselves without fear of harassment, discrimination, retaliation or violence, and help our Franchisees do the same in their workplaces.
Our Strategy
We believe that having a safe place to work is a human right, and we have built a strategy with this in mind, taking steps to foster environments that prioritize the safety of Corporate Staff, employees in our Corporate-owned restaurants and customers while also providing support to our Franchisees in fostering similar environments for their employees. The Company is committed to respecting the health and safety of people, a concept that is incorporated into Company policies, codes of conduct and guiding principles.
You can find additional information about the Company’s human rights approach and salient issues, as well as related policies and standards, on our dedicated Human Rights page.
Focus on Fostering a Safe, Respectful and Inclusive Workplace
Implementing Our Global Brand Standards
The purpose of McDonald’s Global Brand Standards is to promote safe, respectful and inclusive workplaces that help protect the physical and psychological safety of all people. The standards apply across all McDonald’s restaurants (whether Company-owned and operated or franchised) – more than 41,000 locations as of year-end 2023. Restaurants must implement these standards and are assessed on each criterion in accordance with the applicable local evaluation processes.
The Global Brand Standards expect each restaurant to focus on four key areas:
- Protecting employee health and safety.
- Preventing workplace violence (e.g., having policies in place and communicating those to employees, conducting workplace violence prevention training and having reporting mechanisms in place for employees to report concerns).
- Preventing harassment, discrimination and retaliation (e.g., having policies in place and communicating those to employees, conducting training and having reporting mechanisms in place for employees to report concerns).
- Listening through restaurant employee feedback (e.g., conducting employee surveys and creating restaurant-level corresponding action plans).
Implementing Supporting Standards
All McDonald’s restaurants are subject to the same standards and the Company is responsible for ensuring that Company-owned and operated restaurants adhere to the implementation of the standards. The Company also supports Franchisees by providing a suite of optional tools, resources, policies and training to meet the standards. In 2021, the Company supplemented existing respectful workplace training with a global eLearning module, “Building a Safe, Respectful and Inclusive Workplace,” focused on helping prevent harassment, discrimination and retaliation in the workplace. This training is available in multiple languages and offered optionally to Franchisees to help them meet Global Brand Standards requirements. We also offer a suite of workplace violence prevention trainings to Franchisees. In 2023, we updated the training requirements for markets outside the U.S. to require employees to complete training within 30 days of their first shift.
Throughout the Global Brand Standards roll-out, which began in 2021, we have collected Franchisee feedback to help ensure implementation resources are clear, useful and effective. Our Franchisees have shared examples of how the program has strengthened their knowledge and understanding, and how it has enhanced their ability to act and respond in real-life scenarios when needed. Hearing from Franchisees has also identified opportunities for us to make improvements to help achieve a more successful implementation process. Some of these improvements include enhancements to technology and reporting, additional education and communications, training enhancements and updates to optional resources for our Franchisees.
Assessing Compliance
To monitor and support Franchisees in complying with our standards, we have several procedures and teams in place, including:
- Business Reviews: For all markets, carried out with each Franchisee on an annual or bi-annual basis.
- Operations Performance & Customer Excellence (PACE) process: In markets outside of the U.S., PACE is an “always on” consulting platform that identifies people management as one of three core areas to be assessed. In the U.S., the assessment of the U.S. People Brand Standards is conducted by an independent third party and is separate from the PACE process.
- A Network of Franchise Business Consultants that support Franchisees on an ongoing basis to run successful operations and evaluate performance against our standards.
Through delivering the Business Review process and ongoing dialogue with Franchisees, we help protect the McDonald’s brand by supporting Franchisees to operate in accordance with our expectations. In addition to the Business Review process, we complete routine visits to certain Franchisee restaurants to assess and support restaurant performance, including supporting the sharing of people strategy best practices. We help drive Franchisees’ business performance in all areas, from providing consulting services to help improve sales and guest experiences, to sharing optional tools and resources that support their efforts to ensure their employees feel valued, respected and supported.
There are times when Franchisees may be considered to not have fully complied with our standards. We take our responsibilities as a franchisor seriously, and we work with Franchisees to help them improve and identify what, if any, additional support is required. Where improvements are needed, Franchisees must develop the right action steps for improvement. In situations where a Franchisee fails to comply with the prescribed standards, the Company takes appropriate action.
In addition to our review processes with Franchisees, our existing procedures include several ways that an individual can report an incident or raise a concern. We require all restaurants to maintain their own reporting process within their own restaurants. In addition, the Global Business Integrity Line is available to anyone and allows for concerns to be reported anonymously.
Focus on Workplace Health and Safety
The Company promotes regulatory compliance and safety governance through operational, equipment and building standards. Additionally, the Company takes steps to maintain a safe working environment by employing safety-related practices, procedures and training in areas such as, but not limited to, CO2 safety, fire prevention and protection, slip and fall prevention, electrical safety, chemical safety, proper lifting, emergency exits and personal protective equipment (PPE). Templates for incident management, extreme weather plans and evacuation maps are also available. The Company assesses adherence to safety requirements globally using the assessment process described above.
