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learndirect is helping to improve the skills of employees at McDonald’s thanks to a new partnership announced today.

learndirect now provides the maths and English courses offered to McDonald’s employees and completed by all apprentices with the company.

McDonald’s crew access their maths and English courses through the McDonald’s learning portal, ourlounge, and get remote support from a dedicated learndirect team based in Leicester.  The partnership brings together learndirect’s experience of improving people’s skills with McDonald’s commitment to provide its employees with the very best training and development opportunities.

Over the past twelve years learndirect has helped hundreds of thousands of people gain qualifications in maths and English, boosting their functional skills and their confidence in the process, enabling them to break into or progress within the job market.

Now this partnership will see learndirect work with more than 4,000 McDonald’s apprentices every year who achieve around 6,000 maths and English qualifications.  The functional skills curriculum is contextualised to real-life scenarios and can be accessed online 24-7, to suit the flexible working patterns of McDonald’s crew.

Jez Langhorn, Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer, McDonald’s UK, said: Our people are an absolute priority at McDonald’s and it is important to us that they get the opportunity to fulfil their potential, to gain the valuable skills required not just to do their jobs with us, but to successfully develop their careers for the future.

In our business, we want people with an appetite to learn and develop and last year invested over £43 million in training. The development of our people is a fundamental ingredient to the success of our business and partnering with learndirect allows us to make sure access to key qualifications is there for those who need it most.”

Suzana Lopes, senior vice president – sales & marketing at learndirect, said: “We are delighted to announce this partnership and to be working with one of the UK’s leading training employers. Each year we work with thousands of young people, helping them develop the skills and attributes we know employers like McDonald’s want.

“McDonald’s customers expect quick, efficient service and a high-quality product and it’s vital that their employees are equipped to deliver these high standards.  We know, with our experience and history, we can work with them to improve the skills of their workforce and, by extension, their customers’ experience too.”

learndirect is involved in the McDonald’s How to Get Hired programme, aimed at helping young people get into work.  As part of the pilot sessions being held at McDonald’s restaurants in Brixton, Nottingham and Swindon, learndirect is providing experienced staff to help young people put together and improve their CVs.