8 Tips for Training in Franchise Businesses

One of the most important aspects of a successful franchise business is training. Training starts with the Operations Manual, this is the heart of the franchise running, therefore needs to be the glue holding the business together. The assumption is that no skills are needed in that field to start the franchise for the newly appointed director, instead this can be learned.

It’s critical however that all the franchise locations abide by the Operations Manual, essentially, an extension of the legally binding agreement between the franchise owner and head office. Often the franchise model will include compliance factors such as health and safety, data privacy and equality and diversity.

1. Setup your hub ‘prototype’ training centre… and then blend it

Most franchise HQ’s have a central location for training all of their newly appointed franchises. This often involves a slow down to speed up training approach, where new franchise trainees are provided with all the tools they need in a face-to-face series of training workshops. Once this is in place, they can speed up on the job. However, training is often forgotten after the event. In fact, according to the forgotten curve, learning is totally forgotten (up to 80%) 6 weeks after the training. This is where elearning can provide reminders and recaps of the learning that took place, often in bite-size chunks.

2. Use open source, no license fees per user

Given you are responsible for training across your franchise network, you need to ensure you have a platform that is cost-effective to deliver. This is important as you need to report on compliance training for audit purposes. You should consider open source elearning as this means your franchise grows, you don’t need to pay for more licenses per user. Instead, you can invest in content creation or more hands on training, whilst keeping the reporting in place. Strong platforms for training in franchise networks include Totara Learn.

3. Automate Reports

In order to be compliant, you need to ensure that all your franchise network is on the same page. As all your employees are busy, you need to make sure you have automated reporting in place. This means that your employees have email alerts with graphs for managers to show who is on track in compliance training, and who isn’t.

4. Use RAGs; Red, Amber, Green reporting

RAG reporting is a really useful tool to ensure that management has dashboards showing them quickly who in their team is not completing the training. They can then act quickly using the visibility and ease of access to the reports.

5. Provide Performance Support

There’s nothing more effective than on the job training, with performance support learning tools like Watch and Learn, your employees can have up to date training on the job. The 70:20:10 model explains how learning on the job is effective, your franchise can adopt this approach to training to provide up to date learning nuggets at the speed of business. Take a look at how Domino’s Pizza does this here.

6. Embrace Mobile Learning

Leveraging mobile learning means your franchise network can have access to learning in their pocket. Most businesses are now using Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), where they give benefits to those employees willing to use their own smart phones for learning. For example, an estate agent franchise network is leveraging mobile through video, sharing learning on the go for sales professionals. A fast-food restaurant is providing up to date learning to its employees using mobile learning on quick tips in food hygiene.

7. Don’t forget to REPEAT

For compliance training, you must ensure that repeated training is available in your Learning Management System (LMS). Within Totara Learn, one of the popular features is to enable repeat training. This means your franchise networks employees need to re-certify their training each year. The process is automated so there’s no administration that needs to be done by the head office team.

8. Single Source of Truth

There’s nothing worse than having lot’s of numbers in various places when it comes to management reporting across a franchise network. This is where you can use integration with your HR system to support one source of data about your franchise network. Within Totara Learn, this is available out-of-the-box.

Enquire today to find out more about what Webanywhere can do for you.