Creating a Culture of Retention

Creating a positive store culture is the most effective way to attract and retain good employees. When all things are roughly equal, employees will leave bad work relationships for greener pastures. If franchisees are willing to significantly overpay, employees are likely to put up with a little more stress and relationship strife, but when all things are about equal, the attitude is often “why bother”. A key point to understand is that there simply aren’t large barriers to exiting when employees can quickly find an equivalent job without much effort.

With this in mind, I would suggest that Franchise Leaders invest considerable time and effort in creating a store culture that is attractive to this specific segment of the work force. Easier said than done, but here are five areas of focus that can help you build a store culture that will attract and retain quality employees.

• Hire the Right Manager

• The age old debate continues: should you hire for experience or personality? In the case of a franchise store manager, the answer is simple. As long as they are smart and can learn quickly, hire for personality. The reason is obvious, in most cases you can teach a manager the processes and skills they need to run a store, but you are never going to change who they are as a person.

• Emphasize Positive Feedback

• We are programmed to think that a key role of a manager is to address all counterproductive behavior and immediately get it corrected. Even the word “feedback” causes most employees to cringe and brace themselves for information about the latest thing they did wrong. While no one would suggest that problems shouldn’t be corrected, work cultures that acknowledge and emphasize the successes of employees significantly outperform cultures based on correction.

• Celebrate Success Often

• Many franchise owners are currently recruiting the majority of their employees from the “everybody gets a trophy” generation. Millennials tend to get a bad rap since the norms that they grew up with emphasized positive reinforcement and rapid rewards. Why are we fighting this trend? Franchise owners that understand that this generation wants to celebrate collective success frequently, will have a huge advantage in the competition for good employees.

• Make the Routine Fun

• One of the reasons that franchise models are successful is that they provide a tested system for success. All franchise systems depend on a set of procedures and processes that make store operations routine and predictable. Unfortunately, from the perspective of an employee, these routines can become mind numbing. I am reminded of the YouTube video of the Southwest Airlines flight attendant who rapped the safety instructions.

• Measure Your People Efforts

• Franchise owners routinely measure a wealth of financial and customer information to gain a sense of the overall performance of their stores. However, when it comes to their people efforts, they often fly blind by failing to establish even rudimentary people metrics. Start with the basics; for example, a monthly turnover rate for both your employees and managers.

By creating a work culture focused on the employee experience you can greatly increase your chances of recruiting and retaining good employees. In fact, given the nature of franchising, culture may be the single biggest differentiator in the fight to retain top talent. In the years to come, as winning the talent war becomes the critical difference between growth and potential failure, spending time and energy on creating a great store culture will be critical to your success.