The Best Job Training Program In America

In my early years in the community job training field, the late 1970s and early 1980s, two institutions stood out as most effective job training programs for out-of-school unemployed youth—often termed “at-risk” or “disconnected” youth. Neither institution was among those usually associated with job training. The first was the United States military. The second was McDonald’s.

Forty years later, these two institutions still are the among the most effective. The military, and related programs such as the National Guard Youth Challenge program and the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, continue to show impressive impacts in integrating these youth into the job and social mainstream. So in different ways does McDonald’s.

It is worth saying a word about McDonald’s as entry into the work world for at-risk youth, as well as other workers. The issue is timely, with the ongoing debates in California over the state’s recently enacted Fast Food law. It is timely also with the current discussions in regards to the “quality-jobs” mantras of the U.S. Department of Labor.

“At Risk” Youth and the Power of a Job

In its current “1 in 8” campaign, McDonald’s estimates that one in eight American adults have worked at a McDonald’s. With roughly 800,000 workers in the United States on any given day, McDonald’s and its franchisees employ a range of workers, of all ages, work backgrounds and skills including a range of young workers. A good number of these young workers are in-school youth, in high school or post-secondary institutions, and not at all at-risk. But local McDonald’s restaurants also take in youth who have been on the margins, with no clear job goals or job orientation.

At-risk youth have been the focus of government job training and anti-poverty programs, since the Neighborhood Youth Corps, Job Corps and other targeted programs of the War on Poverty of the 1960s. Over the years, the results of the programs have been uneven (among program evaluations, here, here, and here). Most often at-risk youth come to be integrated into the job world on their own as they age, through a general process of maturity. But the program experiences point to strategies that can hasten the entry into the work world and ongoing retention.

The most effective strategy for these youth has been not a particular form of individual counseling, or peer counseling, or literacy or vocational instruction—though each of these approaches can add value. The core impactful strategy has been placement in a job that provides a real service, has structured work times and accountability, requires responding to customers or supervisors, and calls on problem-solving skills.

McDonald’s delivers these jobs on the broadest scale.

McDonald’s and Career Scaffolding for Front Line Workers

Scott Rodrick owns eight McDonald’s franchises in the San Francisco Bay area, employing more than 300 workers. He has been a franchisee since 1993, when he acquired his first McDonald’s in the city of San Francisco, and has hired thousands of workers over the years.

Rodrick regularly hears from former workers who recount the value of their time at McDonald’s. These former workers talk about how nobody else was willing to give them a chance, and how McDonald’s helped them to gain a foothold into the job world. Most did not stay at McDonald’s for more than few years, but used the experience to move onto other jobs, drawing on general work skills gained.

In Rodrick’s experience, chief among these general work skills are the non-vocational skills which he and most employers are looking for in employees: teamwork, customer service, time management, and budgeting:

“A young person, entering the workforce at a McDonald’s for the first time, will likely experience what it means to support a team and have the team rely on you, every minute of the working day. Showing up on time, learning new stations, training fellow employees, engaging with the public (dealing with the positives and the challenges), cashing a paycheck and realizing who gets part of that work (taxes and your take home net), budgeting the net to enjoy the fruits of your hard work.”

The hiring process at his restaurants is not complex. “I try to extend jobs to anyone who appears to have a good attitude towards job commitment, wanting to learn, desirous to work within a team and representing the Golden Arches,” Rodrick explains.

Further, once he has made a hire, Rodrick takes measure to try to retain the worker. Reducing turnover is a priority, and to that end he has instituted several measures. One of these is a policy of promotion from within, and Rodrick notes that “each of the General Managers at my eight stores started as an entry level McDonald’s worker, and each now earns near six figures.”

Other measures, undertaken with McDonald’s corporate, involve educational and employment supports and investments— scaffolding for workers that McDonald’s and its franchisees have built up over the past three decades.

“Archways to Opportunity” is the McDonald’s corporate rubric for a number of major supports and investments for front line workers. Among the key elements:

· “Youth Opportunity” initiative: Pre-employment preparation and counseling, undertaken with the International Youth Foundation, tied to job opportunities at McDonald’s and other companies.

· High school diploma completion: No cost online educational program enabling an employee to earn a high school diploma.

· English language training: No cost English language training, contextualized to the McDonald’s workplace.,

· College tuition assistance: Up to $2500 in tuition assistance for pursuing courses at an accredited college or post-secondary institution (available to any worker after 90 days on the job).

· Individual coaching for job retention and mobility: A “success coach” available to guide a worker on career opportunities at McDonald’s and skills transferable to other occupations.

These are not theoretical incentives. Rodrick notes that his workers draw on all of them. After doing so, most of these workers will eventually move on to other companies. But Rodrick says that his experience is that McDonald’s, as well as the worker, comes out ahead. For him and other franchisees, these incentives have proved to increase lengths of retention, as well as motivating employees in the short run.

What Really is a “Quality Job”

If you only listened to the mantras of the current U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) as well as the Fast Food law debates in California you wouldn’t know any of this. Fast food jobs are regularly dismissed as “bad jobs,” “throw away jobs,” “dead end jobs.”

A main theme of the current USDOL is that at-risk youth, as well as other low income clients of the public workforce system,(welfare recipients, ex-offenders, ex-addicts) should not be placed in just any jobs. The workforce system should concentrate its efforts on “quality-jobs” that meet certain levels of pay and benefits, stability, and worker-voice.

Who wouldn’t support quality-jobs for all workers. But the USDOL approach is not bringing any significant results in expanding the number of middle class jobs. Further, this approach only hurts workers whose realistic job prospects are with entry level jobs. The approach misses three of the first principles of job training that any beginning practitioner quickly learns:

· The public workforce system must meet the worker where they are in terms of skills, interests and work orientation. Not all workers can start in a mid-level or above job.

· It is much easier for a worker to navigate the work world and advance, if they are in a job.

· What is a quality job will differ among workers. For a 40-year-old worker with work experience, a frontline McDonald’s may not be a quality job. However for an out-of-school unemployed youth it can be a very quality job.

A Job, A Better Job, A Career

“A job, a better job, a career” became the slogan of the Los Angeles County welfare offices in the late 1990s, following the 1996 welfare reform under President Clinton. For years, welfare offices in California had been slow to direct benefit recipients into jobs or turned up their noses at entry level job, such as at McDonald’s. President Clinton’s welfare reform, among its other impacts, helped reshape the culture of many welfare offices.

Get someone into an entry job and help them advance: it is a model that has been taken up by community based organizations and workforce intermediaries that serve low income unemployed workers beyond welfare recipients. Its fullest success depends on the willingness and ability of major employers not only to hire but also, like McDonald’s, to do the scaffolding for advancement.

McDonald’s isn’t the only major employer adding this scaffolding. Walmart, Home Depot, Starbucks, Target are just a few of the other major employers who are adding educational and coaching initiatives for entry level workers—expanding investments in their direct line workforces. Workforce intermediaries like America Works, Opportunity at Work, and Burning Glass Institute, are partnering on these initiatives, and driving the processes forward. Widening such scaffolding for worker mobility among major employers (and finding ways to build this such scaffolding among mid-size and smaller employers) will be one of the central challenges for workforce professionals going forward.

The past half century in job training shows that entry level jobs, as at McDonald’s, are not “throw away jobs” or “dead end jobs”. They have been and continue to be valuable entry-points for at-risk youth and other marginalized workers. It is time that government officials and legislators wake up to this.