The Role of L&D in the Modern Franchise Agreement
There is no industry more synonymous with the American success story than franchising. Since the early 1950s, aspiring and forward-thinking business owners have considered franchising a playbook for modeling their commercial ambitions. Since then, the industry has grown to represent 3% of GDP, as per the 2022 Franchising Economic Outlook. The modern franchising industry employs over 8 million people nationally across the United States, and with this kind of scale comes new responsibility and a host of related questions.
How do we communicate our values and our culture? How do we maintain standards in the blind?
Here, we investigate some of these questions and the integral role learning and development play in the modern franchise agreement.
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The Future of Learning is Mobile-First
With scale comes the question of accessibility – How do we ensure the same training standards are met across the board? It is not unusual for franchises to be located thousands of miles apart, and only the very biggest operations have the resources to keep a rep on site all the time.
Mobile training solutions offer respite – both to the traveling educator and to franchising executives tasked with building consistent onboarding experiences.
Mobile solutions offer a user-friendly, cost-effective alternative that is sure to redefine standards within the industry moving forward.
If it was not already abundantly clear before the pandemic, it certainly now goes without saying that content can be updated, deployed, and reconsidered for what it is worth – all at arm’s length and in real time. Video, text, knowledge-sharing, and gamified learning all have their role to play as users benefit first-hand from the unrivaled flexibility of technology.
There are few more effective ways of communicating culture than through the unobstructed view of training initiatives thoughtfully devised and appropriately delivered. For executives looking to keep their finger on the pulse, mobile training is sure to stand out as something of a silver bullet.
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Incorporating Better Analytics and Leveraging the Right Kind of LMS
Providing franchisees with the technology to foster a training culture among their employees also benefits the employer. Incorporating better analytics and leveraging the right learning management system drives engagement among employees.
Employees engaging in content provide data to the franchisors for a deeper understanding of the organization. Data holds incredible prognostic value. When truly understood and correctly implemented, analytics can transform how we frame and tackle our most persistent problems. Information is the key to understanding, analyzing, and acting on emerging trends.
Data is a catalyst for decision-making. For franchisors in particular, the opportunities to weaponize the information behind the data are extensive, from where to invest budgets and develop marketing materials to understanding where enhanced training initiatives are needed.
Ultimately, data enables relationships to be established between the franchisor and franchisee.
Conclusion
As any business grows, there are sure to be teething problems. It is simply a fact of life and hierarchy. What is essential is that organizations on the cusp of success resist the urge to become feverish and risk losing sight of the relationships and systems that matter the most. Fundamentally, the franchisee and franchisor relationship is absolutely pivotal to any form of long-term success. It is the conceptual underpinning of the entire business model.
Here at Intuition, we believe learning and development can play an integral role in guiding the content of these relationships – helping to steer strategy and point the organization toward something better. But in order to achieve that, the right infrastructure must be in place.
Leveraging one’s LMS to its most capable end, incorporating mobile training solutions, and harnessing all the data output that comes with that is an excellent place to start.
Learning and development goes beyond teaching individuals “how to do things” – it nurtures a learning culture that fosters relationships between all stakeholders. Overall, it enables franchise networks to become more collaborative, and it is in the collaborative effort that people and organizations embrace responsibility, move toward their collective goal, and truly shine.
References:
https://www.franchise.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/2022%20Franchising%20Economic%20Outlook.pdf
https://www.msaworldwide.com/blog/does-the-training-method-matter-in-franchising/
Authors:
Conor Prendergast
Conor is a Commercial Technology Associate for Intuition, based out of their IFSC Dublin HQ.
Conor writes for Intuition on topics ranging from Cryptocurrencies, Digital Therapeutics, Emerging Markets, HCP Education, CBDCs and trends within the Pharmaceutical Compliance space.
Aoife Barron
Aoife works as a Commercial Technology Associate for Intuition Publishing, Dublin.
She is working as part of a team who supports a number of Fortune 500 firms through consulting, developing, designing and delivering employee and customer solutions through technology.
