McDonald’s has always catered to different ethnicities, says veep

The Star

By LOH FOON FONG and WONG WEI-SHEN 

foonfong@thestar.com.my

(Check out a video made which has my exclusive interview with Pat Harris and how the work of the civil rights movement in the United States has benefited McDonald's) 

PETALING JAYA: Putting people of different ethnicities and women into the McDonald's Corporation workforce is what drives the company's Global Chief Diversity Officer Pat Harris.

She said that since she was roped in by Mel Hopson, the first affirmative action director in the corporation, to undertake the task in 1985 by joining his team, she had soared in her career.

“McDonald's was one of the first companies to hire an affirmative action director because it recognised that it was good for our business as we saw more diverse customers coming to our restaurants,” said Harris, who was at the McDonald's headquarters here yesterday to give a talk to the staff on incorporating diversity.

She will speak at the 2013 Global Women Summit here, which begins today and will end on Saturday.

Harris, who is also the corporation's vice-president, led a team that developed and implemented diversity strategies throughout McDonald's worldwide, making sure that all employees as well as customers felt valued and respected.

They’re lovin’ it: Casanova (right) and Harris opine that diversity has played a crucial role in McDonald’s success.

When she first started out, there were fewer women as well as blacks, Hispanics and Asians in the workforce and there were fears that jobs would be taken away from white Americans who did not realise that there were so many opportunities for everyone, she said.

Harris said she got Hopson to change the name from affirmative action department to diversity management department as the company would make better progress with it.

She began visiting restaurants throughout the United States with Hopson and talking to general managers and others on what they needed to do to bring in more women and people of colour into the restaurants and offices.

The work of the team was the reason for the company's diversity today, she said.

Harris, who had worked for the company for 37 years, documented the story in 2009 in a book None of us is as good as all of us How McDonald's prospers by embracing inclusion and diversity.

The diversity was further spurred on with the setting up of its Global Women's Initiative in 2006 where they had engaged women leaders around the globe and incorporated women throughout the McDonald's global system.

Its past chairman Fred Turner changed how women were treated in McDonald's he was responsible for the training sessions as early as in the mid-70s which facilitated workshops on leaderships and encouraged value and respect for women and diversity, she said.

McDonald's regional manager Sarah Casanova said that in Malaysia, 50% of its top management were women, adding that the adoption of diversity had contributed to the doubling of profits and sales in the last three years.