In the 1950s, McDonald’s did not transform fast food by simply expecting employees to work faster or telling them, “Make a burger with a patty, and make it fast.”
That instruction described the desired outcome, but not the process.
Instead, the McDonald brothers studied every movement. They designed the kitchen layout, clarified each role, standardised the sequence, created machines, set timing expectations, specified ingredients, created quality checks and established what should happen when something went wrong.
The burger became reliable because the process became reliable.
Now compare that with how many organisations address psychosocial hazards.
Employees are told to “speak up,” “call out inappropriate behaviour,” “have a difficult conversation,” or “report it to HR.” These instructions also describe desired outcomes, but they rarely explain an adequate process.
What exactly should someone say in the moment? How should the other person respond? How do both people distinguish disagreement about an idea from an objection to behaviour? When should the matter be considered resolved? When should it escalate? Who reviews it, and according to what shared standard?
Without a clear process, speaking up remains uncertain, risky and inconsistent. Minor concerns are often ignored until they become formal complaints, conflicts or psychosocial injuries.
In Australia, workplace bullying is defined as “repeated and unreasonable behaviour…that creates a health and safety risk”. But what process addresses the first unreasonable act?
It is like McDonald’s saying: “If burgers arrive late three or four times in a row, report it to the manager.”
McDonald’s uses a time-visible escalation system rather than simply hoping staff notice a delay.
Once an order is entered, it appears on the kitchen display system and its elapsed preparation time is tracked. The display typically changes colour or otherwise flags the order as it approaches and exceeds its target time—effectively moving from normal, to warning, to late. Staff can then prioritise the delayed component, communicate what is holding the order up, or have a manager intervene.
Under McDonald’s Made for You system, the order is divided across preparation stations—such as grilling, bun toasting, assembly and packaging, so everyone can see what is required and where the delay is occurring.
A credible psychosocial safety system needs more than policies and encouragement. It needs a simple operating process: an early caution, with an acknowledgement or clarification, a structured objection if necessary, a clear choice to resolve or escalate, and transparent review when resolution fails.
McDonald’s understood that predictable outcomes require predictable processes.
More than seventy years later, workplaces are still trying to protect human wellbeing with instructions to the worker that amount to: “Make a tasty and fast burger.”
It is time to redesign the workplace too, with a process that makes speaking up private, transparent during review and consistently safe. We are hoping to achieve this with SpatzAI.
Object123 
Leave a comment