The flip side of burgers

By ALICE SHOPLAND

Leanne Hambly is just 25 and she manages a multi-million-dollar business and a staff of 65. They fill some 6000 restaurant orders a week - and yes, most of those orders include fries.

Hambly has been manager of the McDonald's restaurant in Glenfield since August last year.

She first joined McDonald's in January 1997 as a part-time staff member - or crew, as they're called in the company lingo - at Glenfield.

But rather than just supporting Leanne through her fourth-year university studies in information technology, the job gradually became her main focus.

Hambly was promoted to crew trainer in May 1997 and started running shifts in June.

She was studying for her Bachelor of Business Studies through the Open Polytechnic as a way of progressing her career with McDonald's.

But when she realised those studies were far more interesting to her than her tertiary studies, Hambly followed her instincts and quit university.

When her bosses opened a new restaurant at Akoranga Drive in October that year, Hambly started working there full-time as crew, was assistant manager the following month and restaurant manager at the tender age of 22, in March 1998.

She handles all the staff schedules, ordering, hiring and training and firing - "everything down to the gross profit line" - and the occasional crisis.

On a recent Wednesday evening, for example, the drive-through was exceptionally busy. With impeccable timing, the drive-through cash register crashed. That meant that orders placed at one window couldn't be smoothly transferred for processing, and then to the cashier.

With about 25 cars queuing around the corner and on to the main road, Hambly grabbed a stack of paper and a handful of pens and sent crew members out to do things the old-fashioned way.

She's seen how things can get tense in that kind of situation and knows that "you've got to be able to clear bottlenecks, not fight fires."

The restaurant is open from 7 am to 11 pm daily, which means three shifts a day and a maintenance shift starting at 3 am.

But people development is the most important part of her job, says Hambly, and she encourages staff at all levels to start working through the McDonald's qualifications on offer - which are now recognised with New Zealand Qualifications Authority accreditation.

"Many of the crew haven't got any formal qualifications at all," says Hambly, "and to see them taking the opportunity to achieve those through work is really great. That's my favourite part of the job."

McDonald's is the first company in New Zealand to give employees access to NZQA-accredited qualifications from certificate to diploma level.

With McDonald's training alone, employees can gain a National Certificate in Hospitality Operations - or they can cross-credit McDonald's training towards seven of the 12 papers required for a New Zealand Diploma in Business with the Auckland University of Technology or The Open Polytechnic.

Senior training consultant Cathy Gamblin says the NZQA qualifications are a way of formally recognising the wide-ranging practical, management and inter-personal skills that staff learn and use at work.

"It also means we can provide not only a job and a career, but valuable training. That helps us to recruit people who want to move up through the ranks, it makes McDonald's a really good career option, and helps us promote our training."

Gamblin says the training programme is continually being adjusted to meet market needs, and needed only minor changes to meet NZQA requirements.

Hambly says she works 60 to 70 hours a week, including most Friday and Saturday nights "because that's when it's busy." She does try to get one weekend off a month, though.

Her bosses, franchisees Jenny and David Gilbert, own two other McDonald's franchises, and they're an inspiration to Hambly.

"David was running Queen St [McDonald's] at the age of 19, and he and Jenny both started as crew here on the Shore. They both spent time working at head office and left to become franchisees."

That's a path that Hambly will probably take too: armed with her MBA, she'd like to work in marketing, training or operations at the company's head office. And she and her husband, a refrigeration engineer, would like eventually to own a McDonald's franchise.

Meantime, Hambly plans to complete her Bachelor of Business Studies by mid-2002, and will move straight on to her MBA.