Bullet Proof Your Franchise Recruitment: 5 Tasks You Must Standardise

25 percent of employees leave their jobs after just three months

Like any other small business, attracting and retaining staff is a significant HR issue for franchises.

And while many franchises will have certain procedures for recruitment, having a standardised recruitment and onboarding process can greatly reduce the number of false starters.

It is estimated that 25 percent of employees leave their jobs after just three months, meaning many of your franchisees are spending considerable time recruiting and training new staff – what if this time could be reduced?

Imagine if your franchisees had access to standardised position descriptions and selection criteria to help with recruitment, legally compliant employment contracts and consistent onboarding practices.

The impact on your staff turnover can mean they save tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention more time to spend on their business.

Here are 5 HR areas to consider standardising for your franchise network:

1. Position descriptions and selection criteria

A good place to start is by providing standardised position descriptions and selection criteria to make recruitment more streamlined. The description and criteria should be specifically tailored to the kind of employees your franchisees are hiring. Creating comprehensive descriptions will also make it easier for new employees integrate into the company.

2. The interview process

Standardising interview questions can help guide franchisees to find the right staff for their business. It’s important to have a mixture of competency-based questions built around situations a new employee may experience in the job, as well as questions which touch on the existing behaviour and personality of the potential employee.

Also think about implementing a process of rating candidates after interviews – a standardised rating and scoring system that indicates whether or not the candidate met each criterion.

3. Employee contracts and policies

How certain are you that the employment contracts your franchisees are using are up-to-date and legally compliant? While franchisees are responsible to adhering to employment law like any other small business, infractions can have a negative impact on the overall brand, so it pays to minimise your risk.

Providing current and standardised employment contracts can ensure that across the network all franchisees are complying with any necessary industry regulations regarding this critical document.

Likewise, have standardised workplace policies for your franchisees will mean they will be easier to review and keep up-to-date.

Good workplace policies are written to be consistent with your business values, compliant with legislation, and ensure consistency in HR decisions. Some policies you may want to consider implementing include the code of conduct policy, internet and email policy, drug and alcohol policy, work health and safety policy, anti-discrimination and harassment policy, and a discipline and termination policy.

4. Orientation

As a franchisor, providing some kind of HR platform your franchisees can access can greatly assist the onboarding process. With all documents held in a central location and employees able to access documentation that relates to their position, new hires can officially sign off on documents and view company policies before day one of work.

5. Employee performance

Providing standardised KPIs and employee performance documentation will help your franchisees keep track on how new hires are performing. This also means employees know what is expected of them. Remember, the earlier you can be across any issues regarding performance or job satisfaction, the quicker you can address them – before it’s too late and a new employee walks!

It’s one thing to provide quality, standardised processes and systems for your franchise network, however, what’s going to make the difference to it being successful is education. Franchisees are not HR experts, so it’s important to introduce an ongoing educational program to them manage and retain their people.

This Article was originally published on http://www.franchisebusiness.com.au/ “Should you standardise the recruitment processes across your franchise network?”

Barry Lehrer

Having run my own small business for over twenty years, I understand one of the biggest challenges is protecting your business from potentially damaging personnel or HR issues. That’s why I developed Diffuze.