I’m not lovin it

Over 100 of McDonald’s employees have spoken out to the BBC about the toxic culture of sexual assault, harassment and racism. Workers have reported being groped and harassed almost routinely and that their complaints were ignored.

This is clearly horrendous and it’s almost unbelievable that this stuff is still happening in 2023. But what has really set me off into a rant is the absolute chasm between McDonald’s empty, corporate words and the reality of what is happening in their workplace. They have signed an agreement with the Equality and Human Rights Commission pledging to protect their staff from sexual harassment. They committed to ‘zero tolerance’ on sexual harassment. They have promised to deliver awareness training for employees.

McDonald’s may be the villains in focus today, but frankly this gap between what companies say and what they do is all too common. In many places, gender equality progress only means that the senior leaders in companies know what they need to say and the boxes they need to tick to keep their Boards and shareholders happy and off their backs - not that they actually intrinsically care about eradicating the issues and making genuine progress. Genderwashing is everywhere and there are unfortunately not enough companies where women are genuinely respected and seen and treated as men’s equals, from the bottom level to the top, simply because the company believes that nurturing all the talent in its workforce is good for business.

If the likes of McDonald’s really believed in women and equality, they would never allow this stuff to happen. Their words would not be empty. They would have strategies, action plans, intervention systems. Businesses know how to do these things - when they don’t, it tells you everything about what they really think is important.