Keys to Effective Learning Across the Enterprise: A Conversation with McDonald’s

What does it take to deliver effective learning at scale? How do companies with millions of learners balance standardization and efficiency against authenticity? Perhaps the best organization to explore these questions is one of the world’s most recognizable and beloved brands: McDonald’s.

Schoox’s own David Wentworth sat down with Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s, for an insightful conversation about learning and development at the fast food icon. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

People Over Process

You’re the Director of Learning Design and Technology for an organization with a lot of people. What does a people-first mindset mean for McDonald’s?

It’s easy to assume that a company like McDonald’s, which delivers learning to over two million people, is primarily concerned with numbers and methodology. In reality, it’s quite the opposite. According to Lan, it’s only possible to do something right for two million people by focusing on the people.

“You can’t create something for human beings unless you know about the human beings. What do they struggle with? What motivates them? Why do they like the things they do? I strongly believe that if your people are happy, you’ll have a much more productive culture.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Staying Connected to the Frontlines

How does learning differ for all the different roles at McDonald’s? How does that impact your approach as an L&D team?

As the leader of the global learning design team, Lan helps create custom courses for corporate and restaurant-based learners, which includes everything from leadership skills to making fries. 

“We decided as a team that everyone must take annual restaurant training, not only when we’re hired, but every year just like frontline employees. It connects us back to the restaurants and reminds us what makes the job hard for people.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Lan attributes much of her success to a great leadership team around her, also built with the frontlines in mind.

“What I love about our global team is that we have a mix of folks of people who have not worked in the restaurant space and others who started working at restaurants at 16 years old and now hold corporate roles. It’s a great balance of experience that helps us stay focused on our people and what they do.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Accessibility for a Global Team

What challenges come with delivering learning across an enterprise that includes corporate learners, frontline employees, deskless workers, and so many people in franchise environments who don’t directly work for the company?

McDonald’s is a complex organization with a diverse set of employees. That means learning needs vary significantly from location to location and learner to learner.

Some franchises, for example, let employees use their own mobile devices for training purposes, while others require employees to use a shared device available within the location. This can create problems and unnecessary friction in the learning experience, such as a device that defaults to English for a learner more comfortable accessing the content in another language.

“It’s about talking to our technology vendors about how to approach these situations, so people can do things like choose their preferred language right from their first interaction with the platform, even if they’re using a shared device.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Accessibility goes beyond technical specifications and UX design, though. It’s also about diversity and inclusion, which requires intentional effort.

“Is the language we’re using globally understandable? Are we using diverse imagery in our examples? Are we taking our global community into account while building? There are a lot of checklists and guidelines I have my team take into account so we make sure to represent everybody as much as possible.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Delivering Personalized Learning

Do you find there are different approaches to how you’re delivering learning based on things like geography or personal preferences?

Some training at McDonald’s is universal for all employees, regardless of who they work for or where. In other situations, the L&D team creates specialized learning programs to address specific business needs. Lan and her team have to strike a delicate balance between these customized learning programs and universal learning distributed across the entire company.

“We want to figure out what is standard across the board and which problems are most common so we can build training in multiple languages and deliver it really fast, and where we need to deliver customized solutions that address local culture and needs.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

McDonald’s is also big on providing learners the options they want.

“As part of the redesign of our learning programs, we recognized that people have different learning preferences. Some people would rather watch a video, while others would rather read something, so we provide different modalities for learners to choose from.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Keeping it Bite-Sized

One of the pushbacks when it comes to learning is that there isn’t enough time for it. Does this influence how you put content together?

For Lan and her team, it isn’t just about creating content that fits within the flow of work—they strive to design learning that fits within the flow of life. That means keeping content as brief as possible without sacrificing educational value.

“We live in a Tik Tok world. If we tell people everything at once, they won’t remember. When creating content, we have to ask ourselves: if I only have one minute to explain, what are the most important things people need to know about this right now?”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

That said, some things must take as long as they take.

“I know everyone’s big on bite-sized content, and I am too, but how many of us still sit for hours through movies and TV shows? Ultimately, it’s about engagement. The challenge for our learning designers is to create something engaging no matter its length.”

-Lan Tran, Director of Learning Design and Technology at McDonald’s

Hungry for more? Our conversation with Lan is full of invaluable insights across all facets of learning and development for restaurants. Listen to the full episode here, and stay tuned for more episodes of our podcast: They Learn, You Win.