McDonald’s Rising Star wins praise for her selfless approach

It’s not every day you find senior business figures who are overly willing to share their top members of staff with other departments.

Yet Mel Harrison, McDonald’s director of operations UK&I, breaks the mould driven by a “very strong commitment to the growth of her people”, says McDonald’s chief restaurant officer Gareth Pearson.

“She selflessly gives up a lot of her talent and actively encourages them to step away from her team almost,” he tells MCA Insight.

“She would encourage her people to work in the franchising team, or our central operations team, or the people team.

“If the functional heads of those departments were on this call, they would all give you very clear examples of where they’ve benefitted from Mel allowing her top talent to move across.”

Pearson is impressed by Harrison’s approach, especially given the tendency of many to “try and hold on to their best”.

“Mel’s exactly the opposite,” he adds.

Harrison joined the fast-food restaurant chain while studying for a BSc (Hons) Degree in Anatomy at Glasgow University and was named restaurant operations consultant in the summer of 2018.

Since then she has climbed the career ladder holding both franchisee consultancy and business manager positions.

She was also involved in education, learning and development teams and instrumental in the evolution of the company’s apprenticeship programme, says Pearson.

Today, Harrison is responsible for approximately 60 company-operated restaurants in Scotland and the North of England overseeing 10,500 people.

Pearson credits Harrison for her “creative, open, and honest approach”, which he says has contributed to significant improvements across both the customer and people experience.

“The key for me with Mel more than anything is her breadth,” he explains.

“The way in which she views opportunities within the business. She has a good feel for the business and a good degree of intuition and demonstrates, I think strongly, an ability to combine that intuition with insight to make quite well-informed next steps. She’s a big believer in moving to action, and then using the insights to zoom in.”

Harrison’s progression through the brand’s restaurants is one of the reasons why she has such a “good feel” for staff working within them, acknowledges Pearson.

“To deliver a great customer experience you have to start with employee experience. That comes through very loud in how she approaches the day to day.”

Proactivity is seemingly built into her DNA.

Pearson distinctly remembers how Harrison quickly identified the challenges teams and restaurants might face when the hospitality sector reopened following the pandemic and the action to take.

“It was very much how do we support the managers in leading their people and understanding their needs more in a post pandemic world,” he explains.

“Mel found an opportunity to increase the satisfaction of restaurant managers, and instigated a listening group to discuss, engage and work together to improve restaurant leadership and wellbeing.”

Elsewhere, Harrison is one of the founders of McDonald’s Empowering the Female Leader Programme.

Its aim is to support the personal and professional development of women working in restaurants and secure a talent pipeline of future leaders across the UK&I.

“Each year we invite 50 of our managers across franchised and company restaurants to be part of the programme,” Pearson explains. “100% of participants said they have grown personally and professionally as a result of the programme and 38% have already gone on to be promoted.”

Harrison is also a key contributor to McDonald’s UK & Ireland’s Women’s Leadership Advisory Board and Women’s Network, as well as being a prominent supporter of the Women’s Franchising Forum.

So what are Harrison’s standout qualities?

She “gets the longer term”, is creating an “aspirational culture” and understands “the wider needs of the business”, says Pearson.

“She’s incredibly smart, she’s utterly credible because of her background in restaurants, she’s very broad in her outlook, she takes a step back before she tackles most things…

“She thinks quite strategically, she has this unflappable calmness about her, which I think transmits to the people round her and builds trust and she’s very passionate about her people and her customers…

“We really are exceptionally lucky to have Mel on our team.”