When you have gone through an extensive recruitment and selection process to identify your new franchisee, it’s imperative you ensure that they are adequately trained, so they can fulfil the duties you hired them for. Training your staff isn’t for their benefit alone, as the more successful they are in their duties of running a franchise, the higher long-term profitability you will see as a franchise owner.

Franchise Operations Manual

The operations manual is a legally binding compliance document that doesn’t just provide assurance to the franchise owner, but it also offers the franchisee an extensive workbook on how to operate the franchise. Its considered one of the most important pieces of information for any new franchisee because it’s uses extend past the initial training program and will continue to be useful throughout the franchise operation.

The operations manual creation should be one of the first steps you take in a franchise development program as it offers instructions and guidance on areas of the business such as:

• Legal issues and compliance
• Operation methods
• Reporting requirements
• Key performance indicators

As all new franchisees will differ, coming from different backgrounds and having different sets of skills and/or experiences, the operations manual provides them with what they need to know and what they need to learn to be successful for your franchise.

Training program

If you want a person who is representing your company to be successful, you want to ensure that they have the necessary skills to succeed. This is why you will see successful franchises such as PerCurra offer training programmes for every new franchisee, no matter their previous background. This training can take several different forms but some of the most common methods include headquarters training and onsite training.

Headquarters Training

Headquarters training will vary depending on the franchise you choose and what industry they operate in, however they normally follow the same principles. The main benefits of headquarters training for franchisees is that they get to enrol themselves into the company, meet the support team that will be an ongoing asset and get to see the operational method before launching.

This normally involves a mixture of training techniques that will be able to fit the learning style of most franchisees to ensure that they have the functional knowledge to operate the franchise once they go at it alone. The benefit to the franchise isn’t just for the new franchisee, the fact that all new franchisees get to meet the team and discuss possible options boost team moral for the franchise as a whole, as it encompasses the team mentality.

Onsite Training

If the franchisee had the opportunity for headquarters training, they will already have a good understanding of the operational model and what will be required of them moving forward. Whereas onsite training can be more personalised to cover what the individual franchisee is still lacking in knowledge. This allows the franchisee trainer to adapt the subjects of their training to approach the remaining needs of the franchisee without a strict training procedure in place. This is essential as even though you may have covered all topics in the operations manual and headquarters training, not many people will remember everything and will want the opportunity to cover specific areas twice.

As onsite training will generally take place in the persons place of work, it also allows them to practice exactly how to operate on a normal working day with the assistance and experience of a trainer there to guide them when they get stuck.

Ongoing support

Ongoing support may not normally be considered as training, but essentially it fulfils the role of providing additional assistance or training after the initial training programmes, and therefor is an important asset to a new franchisee. When designing your support centre or network you need to consider what areas are going to assist the franchisee, not to necessarily make money, but to assist in running the franchise.

We make this point as in the past some franchises have made the support provided to sales focused, which has resulted in franchisees not being able to find the support they need to run a specific area of the franchise, which in turn makes the franchise lose money. Everyone needs support at some point, and you will find some need it more than others. Having that helping hand from an expert who has previous experience of this issue ensures that they will be able to get the answers they need to succeed.

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