McDonald’s Head of Digital HR: Leaders are a crucial part of successful transformation

Over the pandemic, the role of HR has rapidly evolved. For some organizations, the function evolved from being solely auxiliary to being more adjacent to, and intertwined with, the business leadership; taking a central role in restructuring working practices, rolling out hybrid, remote and digital practices, and ensuring that work became more people and wellbeing centric.

Yet, HR cannot forget that there are still potential big wins if it continues with transformation — even though it has done so much over the past two years. With the talent marketplace still in flux, HR must rework approaches to employee engagement, retention, personalization of work and how remote and hybrid works are managed. In addition, the function cannot forget that L&D and DE&I are of central importance.

In order to help understand how to move towards an operating model which takes this all into account — so the businesses that HR operates in can thrive — Shakti Jauhar, head of global, digital HR transformation and people experience at McDonald’s talks about the holistic and total approach that post-pandemic transformation needs in order to be successful at the HR Transformation stage on Unleash World’s first day.

You can’t do transformation without redesigning your organization’s structure.

Simply put, Jauhar said that HR’s approach to transformation has to be completely holistic and completely future-oriented. The function has to forget the past — as companies obsessing with returning to pre-pandemic models will, in his opinion, lose out to competitors — and also move past models of reactivity necessitated by the pandemic towards a more strategic approach for any transformation to be successful.

Furthermore, Jauhar told attendees that any transformation has to be guided by improving the customer and employee experience. And if there is any doubt over whether the people function should think radically, Jauhar put that confusion to bed: “Why couldn’t a frontline worker have the flexibility and (partly) be able to work where they want?”

He also shared with the crowd that getting leadership buy-in for any transformation is absolutely crucial, as they have to have the will and passion to drive through change. In fact, Jauhar noted that as any transformation can’t just be about processes or operations but the whole organizational structure in order to be successful, this leadership buy-in is crucial.

Transformation is really hard if people aren’t engaged at the highest levels of the organisation.

In fact, he added that transformation should be guided by changing the conception of the organizations towards a people experience model away from old geographical-centric or capability-centric models.

This is an undeniably huge task but with businesses having to face up to multiple shifts at once — changed demands from workers, widespread issues with wellbeing and stress, a tight labor market, an ageing workforce — it’s one that Jauhar says is completely necessary.

And, he finished, it is in this way that HR truly make good on the idea of transformation that is not just about changing systems or processes but about moving to a new model and experience of work. A model that is fun, engaging, productive and effective. A top takeaway from Unleash World.

Transformation is not about systems: it’s about how you work and how create experiences going forward.