The fast-food giant has embraced digital tools in a major overhaul of its people management
Hungry Jack’s employs 30,000 people in 450 restaurants, serves 2.2 million Australians a week, and hires 300 people each week.
But the truly remarkable fact about the fast-food favourite is that, until 12 months ago, it relied on spreadsheets to manage its huge workforce.
Speaking at the recent Workday Elevate Summit in Sydney, Hungry Jack’s chief people officer Jenny McKie (pictured above) shared how the business went from “admin overload” to hiring new team members in 24 hours after a massive digital transformation of its people management.
“We had managers swamped with menial tasks—screening resumes, setting up interviews, doing onboarding tasks—all of these tasks taking away available time to spend with the people they had already employed,” McKie told the summit.
“We had managers with degrees and leadership traits working as crew but no clear visibility or mobility paths to promote them, so creativity, leadership, and potential were all being held back by our spreadsheets and paperwork.
“We had great leaders caught up in low-value tasks instead of growing high-value teams. So, the result was we were burning time, risking compliance, and, in some cases, losing great people because we couldn't simply move fast enough or see far enough.”
From spreadsheets to rapid recruitment
Fast forward 12 months, the company has implemented the first phase of Workday core HR and cut hiring times from three to four weeks to as quick as 24 hours and increased applications by 300% to more than 10,000 a week by improving the candidate experience.
Phase two of the project will be rolled out this month, with advanced communications, talent and survey capability and remuneration and performance reviews managed in the platform.
“We needed to change how we managed our large workforce to improve retention and enable their growth,” said McKie, who started her career as a restaurant crew member more than 30 years ago.
“The plan is to elevate the role of our restaurant managers by investing in them, increasing their capability, creating pathways, and making their job a lot easier—and to do that, we needed to invest in technology.
“We could no longer work with spreadsheets and unintegrated systems. Scaling isn't just about opening new restaurants either; it's about making sure that every new restaurant we open launches with the right people, the right support, and the right systems that can scale.
The business has also brought onboard its first AI crew member - Jacki -who started work in May.
McKie said getting leadership and C-suite buy-in had been a key part of the project, as well as being able to show clear ROI for the business.
While McKie is eager to have access to real-time analytics to better manage Hungry Jack’s workforce, she’s even more enthusiastic about the impact these changes will have on her teams.
“What we are most excited about is the 17-year-old crew member who has a real path to a restaurant manager role or corporate role right from their phone. It’s about retaining great people because they can see what’s next,” she said.
