Quite a lot of column inches and focus has been on the recent announcement of alternative (vocational) A-levels as recently announced by McDonalds amongst others. Why the big fuss?
After all these are not that dissimilar to apprenticeships from previous times. So what’s the difference this time? Well some very clever marketing for one – top drawer in fact. McDonalds are very, very good at marketing/PR – so good that I wonder if they will also be providing a McMarketing A-level, so to speak?
From the HR community there’s a lot of ‘Yesses’ and ‘Ohs’ (in a When Harry met Sally kind of way!) but let us not be fooled. McDonalds are unlikely to be doing it for purely altruistic reasons. Followers of Adam Smith will be noting the case of the ‘acting in one's own interests’ benefiting wider society. But it is not without its risks......
After all McDonalds has rightly spotted, certainly in the UK, that as a country we don’t seem to have the capability to educate a significant proportion of our young sufficiently for entry into work. The outcome of all of this suits the Government since they can leave the private sector to sort out where the secondary education sector is found wanting. In other words private enterprise is compensating for public funded failure.
So unless McDonalds gets an equivalent recompense it is costing them money. In effect it can be seen as a higher tax. From a pure shareholder return (and there will be some out there), it is not a preferred strategy with out a very robust business case.
McDonalds have come up with a ‘smart’ solution from a resourcing/talent perspective (if it is also geared towards resource replacement since McDonalds is in a mature market).
But there is a price to be paid. For McDonalds this is an additional cost to their resourcing model in the ‘hope’ that the pay-off is talent that they can retain, more efficient recruiting, increased positive publicity and possibly therefore maybe higher sales?
The downside for McDonalds is that, for other ‘restauranteurs’ in their market space, there is the potential for ‘free-riding’, i.e. jumping on the back of a McDonalds education and then enticing individuals away saving on their own education costs. Given the transient nature of the ‘fast food’ industry, how much individual loyalty is generated is a very interesting question. In game theoretic terms, McDonalds would tend to lose, particularly in more economically constrained times. Of course, McDonalds could potentially spin-off their School/university but then that would potentially break the direct link with the company, negating the advantage.
The problem with the various HR/general column inches on this story is that only half of it gets reported with limited analysis. But it’s a great ‘good news’ story, I guess. Even so, it commands more interest than maybe it warrants. But that is nothing new in the HR press these days.
Don’t get me wrong, given the choice, I would prefer educated youngsters over non-educated youngsters and I admire organisations like McDonalds who do as against those that don’t.
But for McDonalds, it is still a market gamble, but one perhaps they are forced into. Time will tell us as to how successful it will prove to be................fortune favours the brave.......
