McDonald’s Hong Kong, with one of the highest market penetrations globally, serves 1 million customers daily in a city of 7.5 million. Remarkably, half of the population visits a McDonald's at least once a week. Given this high customer volume, a staffing shortfall could severely disrupt operations. It is crucial for McDonald’s to maintain a robust staff complement, including part-time youth workers, making it the city's largest youth employer.

However, retaining these young employees proves challenging as many view their McDonald's job as merely a stepping stone to other opportunities. This perspective contributes to a looming youth labor shortage, complicating recruitment and retention efforts. Recent trends indicate a worrying scenario: a 32% drop in employee turnover from the fiscal year 2020 to 2021, marked by declining applications and increasing churn.

To flip this perception, we decided to add value to our in-house training programme for managers. We opened the ‘Professional Diploma in Management Development (QF Level 5)’ programme to all employees, transforming it to appeal to those looking for career development opportunities.

We worked with the government to give our programme the accreditation equivalent to a bachelor’s degree. This helped amplify the achievement of our employees to the public and elevated the perception of a job at McDonald’s to be one that leads to a promising career.

Our PR strategy recognizes the importance that young applicants and the broader Hong Kong community place on educational opportunities endorsed by reputable institutions. This understanding guided us to emphasize McDonald’s commitment to workforce development, beginning with sharing personal stories from our employees to humanize our brand.

We introduced the McDiploma (‘Professional Diploma in Management Development’) employee training program, which is recognized by the Hong Kong Government and industry leaders, to highlight our dedication to professional growth.

To broaden our message, we leveraged mass publications in the final phase, enhancing our reach and ensuring that McDonald’s role in nurturing talent resonated widely. This strategic approach positioned McDonald’s as the employer of choice for ambitious youth and reinforced our reputation as a responsible, forward-thinking organization, effectively improving our brand perception and attracting quality talent.

We created an in-house training programme for our managers, the ‘Professional Diploma in Management Development’ and worked with the government to obtain accreditation equivalent to a bachelor’s degree, recognized and validated by the industry.

To communicate it had the same academic rigour of a bachelor’s degree, our graduation ceremony was held in the style of a university graduation ceremony, inviting special guests from the entertainment sector and government officials to give impassioned, heartfelt speeches. These stories of McDonald’s business managers highlighted not only McDonald’s as a provider of career development opportunities but also stories of human triumph - overcoming social stigmas to discover a new sense of pride in the work they poured their blood, sweat, and tears into.

These stories are disseminated across a wide range of publications, celebrating the business acumen that McDonald’s managers and crew possess, while expressing McDonald’s employer philosophy to the general public.

We created citywide buzz and generated over USD $1.2 million in PR value surrounding our business philosophy. This positive buzz was also reflected in our brand tracking, creating a record high for our 'Good Employer' brand score. But most importantly, this campaign sparked new interest in a career at McDonald’s, resulting in a 77% increase in job applications during the campaign period, and generating a 109% increase in the successful recruitment rate.

The initiative also led to the best recruitment results in the past few years. By comparing our recruitment results for the year of 2023 against 2022, we observed a 32% increase in store manager recruits and a 39% increase in new recruits. All this culminated in reversing McDonald’s steady decline in the employee inflow/outflow trend, bringing it back to a net positive figure—a whopping 312% increase from 2022 to 2023!