In-between last century’s human resources strategy and this one’s lies in one simple question: Do you hire lucrative recruits or create them? The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and you’d best figure out exactly where because talent is this decade’s most profitable asset. Too many franchisors focus on winning franchisees, but we focus on winning the right ones. Retention and nurturing can turn imperfect franchisees into stellar ones, so our recruitment process remains one of the keys to our business.
MARKETING FOR THE RIGHT SKILLSETS
Knowledge can be learned, but talent and motivation are inherent to character. Intelligence, work ethic, and discipline can’t be bought, but they can be found if your recruitment is focused. The only way to find the ideal franchisee is to be aware of the traits and talents you’re seeking in the first place. Professionally written marketing material that appeals to our demographic organically attracts the right skillset. By choosing our keywords wisely, we can ‘fish’ for franchisees who have the priorities we’re hunting for. The best franchisors host a discovery day where they can interact with potential recruits.
ORIENTATION
Fortune 500 companies like Ernst and Young® and Deloitte® are increasingly shortening the hiring process to leave more room for new hire orientation because talent that outlasts the first three months tends to stay for years. As a franchisor, you probably don’t have the funds to construct a Google plex to welcome your recruits and motivate them during onboarding, but your process can be equally effective. Begin by:
- Discussing the long and short-term career goals of your franchisees and offering guidelines on how to achieve them.
- Running initial training through video, headquarters-based programs, grand openings, and on-site education.
- Check in with your new franchisees weekly for their first month so you can identify any inefficiencies that need to be addressed.
RETENTION
We’ve found that franchisees without motivation, visibility, and support structures will hop to new organizations the second tough times strike. Retention of talent is far less expensive than acquisition, so we tap into existing franchisees’ latent education, talents, and experience. Recognition costs nothing, but the morale it inspires generates profits.
In an age of big data, no human resources strategy is complete without analytics. Aggregation technologies work on your behalf at all hours of the day, identifying weaknesses in franchises and their owners automatically.
Support structures give you almost as much passive productivity—they eliminate the need to make small decisions, freeing up more hours to focus on the retention strategies that require your intellect and expertise. Low staff turnover rates give our stakeholders the power to achieve their highest goals, so we focus as much on retaining bottom-rung staff as we do franchisees.
Franchisee engagement can be generated by:
- Offering refresher courses.
- Giving meaningful feedback.
- Researching franchise staff’s performance.
- Implementing a buddy system that pairs the better franchisees with new ones.
- Running new staff orientation programs.
- Raising staff salaries once employees have worked through a particular amount of training. This improves franchise success and retains franchisees long-term.
CORPORATE CULTURE
Happy franchisees deliver premium service, which helps generate the revenue that will eventually find its way into your accounts. Corporate culture must be about more than simply business: your company must run on principles, emotions, and values. Compensation, incentives, and rewards play critical roles here, even in the bottom rungs of your franchises. Samurai Sam’s Teriyaki Grill® nurtures its franchisees because we know that valued stakeholders are valuable stakeholders.
