Our Feed

Question: How do I incorporate training into my systems?

Answer: Training is critical element of integrating a new franchisee into your system.  And a franchisee’s training of its employees in integral to the franchise system’s success.  At the MRA Show last month, we were lucky enough to have Dave Hood, President of iFranchise Group (www.ifranchisegroup.com), a national and international expert in franchising and systems development assist me in presenting a seminar on documenting your training and system operations for growth.

Our seminar presentation focused on training programs and their importance.  When implementing a franchisee training program, you will want to train the franchisee about your culture and the system.  Effective franchisee training programs will include franchisee/management training that will include significant classroom and on-the-job training about your systems.  Topics for the franchisee/management training program are the franchisor’s culture orientation and history, use of the operations manual, pre-opening procedures, personnel issues, advertising, marketing, management procedures, franchise reporting requirements, accounting/record keeping, customer service procedures, front/back of house manager duties, delivery procedures, inventory management, POS system, cleaning procedures and safety procedures.

Franchisee training will also include on-site staff training of the restaurant franchisee wait staff.  This on-site staff training will focus on similar topics to the franchisee/management training program listed above, with an emphasis on the hands-on and on-the-job training of the staff and consist of topics such as quality customer service to kitchen operations.   Effective training programs will increase employee skills and productivity, increase employee job satisfaction, food quality, food safety and restaurant profitability and decrease management and staff turnover.

Effective training programs will:

• Incorporate a variety of instructional methods, such as audio and visual components.
• Ensure instructors are highly knowledgeable (by testing and re-testing trainers) and capable of connecting with the audience.
• Use employees to teach other employees.
• Use company stores as a model (and they should uphold the standards you are training to your franchisees).
• Incorporate actual case studies into training curriculum.

Make sure that trainers not only show “how” to do things, but also “why it’s important.”