Inside McDonald’s Culture Strategy
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we sit down with Emilee F. DeMartino, SVP and Chief People Officer for McDonald's International Operated Markets, to explore how one of the world’s biggest employers keeps a people first culture alive across more than 120 markets. Emilee shares how values like serve, inclusion, integrity, community, and family guide everyday decisions in a world of constant change.
She breaks down how AI is fixing real problems for restaurant teams. Hiring that once took 3 days now takes 3 minutes, applications have nearly doubled, and managers get 5 to 6 hours back each week to focus on their crew and customers instead of chasing admin.
If you care about building a workplace people actually want to be part of, this episode is worth your time. It shows what happens when culture is not a slogan but a system, and why teams that listen, learn, and adapt will always outrun the ones stuck in old habits.
🎓 In this episode, Emilee discusses:
How AI cut hiring from 3 days to 3 minutes
Why candidate experience nearly doubled applications
How McDonald’s keeps its values alive across global markets
Why listening and data shape the future of work at McDonald’s
How cultural norms help teams move faster and collaborate better
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Chris Rainey 0:13
Emily, how you doing? I'm doing great. Good to see you again. How's life treating you?
Emilee DeMartino 0:16
Going good. I cannot believe it is mid October ends. It just
Chris Rainey 0:23
goes like, the summer ends, and it's like, straight to the end,
Emilee DeMartino 0:27
but it's good, and it's been so energizing to be here this week. The ideas, the innovation, the grappling with challenges and opportunities, to really step into AI in a big way, from a people's standpoint,
Chris Rainey 0:39
is pretty exciting. Yeah, and tell everyone a bit about the session you did.
Emilee DeMartino 0:43
Yeah, so I was on one of the panel session focused on culture as a superpower. Excellent conversation. I mean, I think that's something it's so important to as there is so much change that is happening around us, ensuring that we hold on to who we are as an organization. We're clear on what our culture is. We're intentional about what our culture is, and we're engaging our people.
Chris Rainey 1:04
Yeah, on the other panelists are on the panel, what were some of the things that you took away from the conversation?
Emilee DeMartino 1:09
Yeah, I would say certainly ongoing engagement and making sure that there's clarity. Many of us talked about the fact that we're really embedding what our values are into our operating fabric as an organization and making sure that that's clear. You know, several people commented about employee listening and surveys and being able to assess that we do the same thing. We've got a values index that we come back and we look at regularly, and we action plan around. Where are we doing? Well, yeah, where could we get better? What are some of the things we need to do deeper listening to get some perspectives on which is excellent?
Chris Rainey 1:41
Yeah, we're such a like diverse culture or community as that you serve. How do you preserve that culture when you have such a global workforce, whilst embracing AI and automation?
Emilee DeMartino 1:56
So you know, at McDonald's, we are a people first organization, and our values are really embedded throughout how we operate. And so that's, that's some of those values. Yeah, new people listen. So first of all is serve, putting people first good, first value to have, certainly, you know, not, no room for misinterpretation. Secondly is inclusion. We open our doors to everyone. Integrity, we do the right thing. Next one is community. We're good neighbors. And then finally, family, we get better together. And so a big part of that family value is our three legged stool, our company, certainly our company employees, our franchisees and our suppliers. And I would say the other exciting thing about our values is they transcend that McDonald's system, and those are values that were helped shaped by our suppliers, by our employees and by our
Chris Rainey 2:43
franchisees, yeah, and I love that, because they also stand the test of time. Yeah, no matter what, whether it's AI or whatever is going to come in the future, these are almost the foundation.
Emilee DeMartino 2:53
Yeah, totally, totally timeless. And yeah. And I guess if you think about those values, one of the examples that I would give you that we're really focused on with AI and technology right now is that we want to make work better. We want to understand what are the pain points in the experience. I'll take the example of our restaurant teams, and one of the things we discovered is our restaurant managers were spending so much time and administrative duty trying to get scheduling managed, to hire and ensure that they have the crew that they need to run and operate the restaurant, and so one of the spaces we've leaned into has been leveraging AI as part of our restaurant hiring. And that has paid so many dividends from taking scheduling, from being, you know, three days to get sorted with a candidate to three minutes. So it's it's been powerful. The thing that I would also call out that I really love about that is it's improved the candidate experience as well. So we are seeing we have nearly doubled the amount of applications that we've had, and so having the efficiency in that process, also having it be a process that is friendly to our candidates, that they enjoy and stay up to speed in terms of where they are, has been super helpful. And again, the thing that I love the most is we've been able to give our restaurant managers five to six hours back a week. That's time to spend with our guests, that's time to spend with our crew, to help continue to coach and develop them. And so that has been brilliant. And then from a corporate standpoint, we are continuing to look at, how do we best harness AI and learn and Up skill around AI? One of the things we are doing is leveraging copilot and exploring and investing in, how do we start to bring that into how we work from a corporate standpoint? Equally, we've got a partnership with LinkedIn learning, and we're building out playlists around AI development so that we can continue to upscale ourselves. And a critical part of that is also around data and insights. And how do we become deep in how we think about some of the foundational pieces harnessing AI, right? You've got to think about, what are the inputs you've got to think about the data infrastructure that you have, that it's it's pulling from. So lots of exciting work happening there. One other space that we're we're looking to get into is taking both our restaurant listening and, you know, I'm passionate about listening and our customer listening, and look at, how do we pull those insights tighter together? And so as we go into next year, I think we'll have even more to share with some really cool things we're doing.
Chris Rainey 5:18
Yeah, how are you ensuring leaders, you connect those cultural values and the purpose of your leaders and managers.
Emilee DeMartino 5:27
So I would say again, we've we've taken and we've embedded those values into how we operate. The thing that I would say I'm proudest of is I see them show up in decisions at every level in the organization. So those values are really that cultural compass that we have to help guide decisions. We've also embedded them in all of our people practices. So if we think about when we're hiring someone in we're screening, and we're thinking about how those those values show up as we're assessing performance, and we're setting goals. We're setting clear expectations that it matters as much how you do something as the what that you do, and so that is something that love to see, that we're emphasizing. And then, as I mentioned, listening, we've got within our employee listening, we're able to pull some of those questions to tie them directly to our values and understand where there's opportunities and where there's strengths. And then certainly dive deeper, we've got a value values index, and we hold our leaders accountable.
Chris Rainey 6:23
I was about to say, like, do you connect that to their performance reviews and stuff like that to make sure you have the accountability?
Emilee DeMartino 6:28
Yes, yes, absolutely. And then I know I had mentioned briefly, but our values cascade across the system, so when we think about even partnership with with key stakeholders, our franchisees, you'll see our values show up in our business review process that we go through, and we engage with them on a regular basis. And so this is language of the system. This is how we define we are
Chris Rainey 6:50
in the business, yes, and the work and that processes everything you do, yeah.
Emilee DeMartino 6:56
Again, as I talked about those values, there's also this sense that those are who we are. And we're also in a time where we're asking ourselves questions on our accelerating the arches strategy, and we really want to look at, how do we become faster, more innovative, more efficient, and create better career opportunities for our people? We've said, look, what do we do? In addition to those values, is there, are there some clear behaviors we need to articulate to help us go further faster. And so we have articulated some cultural norms over the last few years that have helped us do just that. So, you know, if I look at what those cultural norms are, we have start with the problem being really clear on what we're going after. Another critical one that we have is relentlessly prioritized. I think everyone probably feels like there's a lot happening in the world today, and ensuring that we're clear on what we're trying to solve, we're prioritizing around that. And then the third one is, we call it share and steal, or share and scale. And the reality is, is, if you think about the McDonald's system, the size in which in the scale in which we operate, there is no issue or opportunity that hasn't been seen somewhere in our system that we can learn from, and so that cultural norm is really around being able to spotlight and discover Best Practices learn from each other. Test certainly helps speed us up when there's a market that's already tried something that we can pull forward and learn from and then discuss, don't present. So oftentimes we're trying to get at, how do we get more efficient at meetings? How do we be really clear on what we need to get out of the meeting we all
Chris Rainey 8:30
love really have helped. We all love sitting in meetings that we don't need to be.
Emilee DeMartino 8:33
Yes, and I will say, you know, we've had these cultural norms in place for a couple years. I think the one we've moved the needle the most on and the one that has resonated the most with the organization is share and steal or share and scale. We're seeing it through products from market to market. We're seeing it in value platforms for our consumers that we're scaling from market to market, but this sense that there's so much to learn from each other, and that's another space I'm incredibly excited for us to start to apply even more technology. So we'll leverage meetings and forums to help bring those ideas and surface those great solutions and learns. But there's even more we can do with technology there.
Chris Rainey 9:11
What I love about a lot, what you're saying as well, is you're giving people the language to be able to have conversations and bring that into meetings as well, and into the decision making process, because you have a clear lens to look through, absolutely right. So I think that's super interesting.
Emilee DeMartino 9:27
You know, an important point, I would say, too, is this, is these cultural norms are not a leadership language. These are for absolutely every employee in the organization. And we also take, and we've got questions are on our employee survey around these cultural norms to get feedback from the employee base on how well are we doing. Are we making decisions more quickly, or are we not? Are we doing a better job collaborating between some of our corporate teams and our markets? And so we continue to assess how well we're doing and how we can get better and and I would even say those cultural norms and we'll continue. To look at how well are those serving us, and do we need to, you know, continue to evolve those in time as well, but having agility
Chris Rainey 10:05
there is as you look ahead, what are you most excited about?
Emilee DeMartino 10:10
Yeah, I there's a lot to be excited about, looking looking around here, all of the ideas and the innovation and just the passion to really get after the role that HR can play in transforming the organizations. I guess I personally get most excited about thinking about, how do we rewire organizations? How do we rewire work going forward, and do that in a way that you're intentionally making work better? I feel like that's a massive, massive opportunity.
Chris Rainey 10:39
I appreciate you as always. Yes, thank you so much. Yes to the event, and I'll see you soon. All right?
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Emilee DeMartino, SVP and Chief People Officer for McDonald’s International Operated Markets.