Rich Floersch, executive vice president, chief human resources officer of McDonald’s, said his interest in HR began in business school in the 1980s. State University of New York at Buffalo offered an HR concentration, and he enjoyed it.

“I’ve always been curious how teams, how people, how organizations can achieve high performance,” he said. “I’ve always been a bit of a student of what seems to work from a leadership perspective, how to motivate, how to inspire people. HR plays a significant role in whether or not that’s going to be successful. Talent management and succession planning and the combination of that with rewards, how you integrate those, it creates the environment for people and teams to be successful if done right.”

Floersch can draw from 30 years of field experience — he joined McDonald’s in his current position more than seven years ago as the company was in the midst of a revitalization — to do HR correctly. Before a headhunter recruited him for McDonald’s, he worked for companies such as General Foods and Kraft, where he held executive HR positions and developed an appreciation for and understanding of business and its impact on HR practice.

“Most successful HR people have strong business acumen,” he said. “You’ve got to have a curiosity about where the business is going and understand how the company makes money. The second thing is I think you’ve got to have a pretty good sense of the values and the culture. Designing something around motivation or leadership development that is off the shelf versus one that matches and supports what the company stands for is part of the puzzle that you’ve got to figure out.”

Talent Is Transformative
McDonald’s consistently high performance — the company recently announced its 100th consecutive month of positive global sales — does not mean HR and business leaders can become complacent. Floersch said even after seven to eight years of strong business results, he guards against falling into the trap of saying, ‘We’ve cracked the code and figured it all out.’ To do so can promote a mindset that incrementalizes new ideas, rather than promote one focused on continuous improvement.