As a previous owner of a Franchise I know the importance of maintaining employee commitment, loyalty and enthusiasm in maximising customer satisfaction, generating positive customer perception and protecting your investment.
Repeat Business is the life-blood of any Business worth its salt. Coupled with a structured approach to increasing market share, looking at the 'window of opportunity' and delivering services with excellence and cultivating positive customer perceptions would appear to be a recipe for success.
Have you ever stood at the front counter of a Business and overheard employee dialogue or noticed that some employees appear to convey displeasure with their jobs?
As a person, and practitioner, interested in people it has often been my observation that many Franchisees need to wake up and realise that people management is not that complicated or as difficult as they may have thought. There are a few simple things that can be done to build an environment of high trust amongst employees.
However, it appears that not all franchise owners practise what they preach. Many espouse that 'we treat our employees as valuable assets of the Business'. This has always been a great source of amusement to me (because experience has often demonstrated otherwise).
Some people engage subtlety in intimidating staff, constantly making nit picking comments, refusing to lead by example and reducing staff numbers to the point where the bear minimum of staff are left to serve in the Business. This begins to seriously effect employee moral, customers are disenfranchised and owners wonder why profits are down.
Take this true, real life example which I was actively involved in some months ago (names and details changed to ensure privacy).
Aunty Marges was a Brisbane Franchise that appeared on the scene several years ago. Aunty Marges specialised in quality cookies, cake and Coffee. A husband and wife bought two of these Franchises.
The new owner's employed 4 staff in one particular location. Staff was rostered on at different times throughout the day with one of the owners helping for part of the day. The roster started at 7.30am and normally finished at 6.00pm
It was a busy Business located in a popular shopping centre, was a pressurised environment. The owners had over-extended their borrowing capacity.
Janelle, a teenager had been employed along with the other 3 employees to work in the Business.
Janelle was known to be a hard worker who went out of her way to up-sell, interacted well with customers and took her job seriously. Despite being in her last year of college she took her responsibilities seriously.
One morning the owners called a staff meeting where they admitted that they were over-committed and requested that employees put in an extra effort. When staff left they were not replaced.
The friendliness soon began to disappear and the owners began to leave critical notes scolding employees and placing more demands on them. As a result staff began resigning.
One night as our family was over at Janelle's place the telephone rang. It was for Janelle. The Business owner (the wife) rang up and was
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