There are many key factors that lead to the success of any franchise, but among them the most important is communication. Being able to maintain successful communication across multiple departments and teams is crucial for a company to run efficiently–plus it is also important to consider the well-being of staff.
Digital signage has done its best to maintain and improve internal communications throughout many businesses. From small start-ups, grade schools and universities, hospitals, and even through franchises, digital signage with the proper CMS platform can help create content that will engage staff and improve communication and boost engagement leading to a successful business.
Franchises suffer a lot from miscommunications but digital signage can help improve it at every location–and here’s how!
How Proper Communication Makes a Difference in Franchises
Learn about the necessity of top-notch communication and how it can improve business standards and employee morale!
Improving internal communications within any franchise can help to ensure that all locations are up to date on essential information and changes. Image courtesy of Claromentis.
Franchises can be difficult to maintain when it comes to keeping up with proper internal communication standards due to the high-volume of staff members that are across a span of dozens or even hundreds of locations. It’s important to understand just how crucial keeping up with internal communications is with franchises and how it can positively make an impact on sales, reduce high employee turnover rates, and keep staff happy.
Promotes Growth and Innovation Within the Franchise
One of the best reasons for making sure to improve communication within a franchise is to support growth and innovation. The more open that you keep the dialogue between staff no matter their title, the more that managers will be able to see a unified growth. This can come from looking at current trends and how they could positively impact the franchise, or even with franchisors sharing their own practices that effectively work within their own store–this overall can help the franchise to expand and grow with proper communication tactics.
Improves Engagement to Build Trust With Staff
It’s important for staff to trust the company that they work for and to see changes where they are needed. Many employees often leave their position in a franchise because they feel as if their work goes unnoticed and they don’t feel valued, but improving internal communications can help to improve engagement and help build trust within their managers and other higher-ups.
Monthly meetings and even video messages from the CEO of the franchise are a great way to expand engagement and feel as if staff are seen and supported in a company so large. It can also foster transparency and make sure that all staff are aligned with the common goals to see success within the franchise.
Ensures Brand Consistency
Spreading brand awareness across multiple locations in a franchise is extremely important as it helps to keep all staff and locations–both national and global ones–in the loop about different changes, marketing promotions, and sales and deals. Effective communication between staff within a franchise can help to ensure brand consistency with updates to operational updates, uniform standards, changes to services, and keep all product releases occurring at the same time and comply with the standards put in place.
This can help to reduce any risk to the franchise’s reputation with some locations being in the loop with the brand changes and others that may not have caught up yet.
Provides Support to All Staff Members
Employee retention is crucial for all businesses and is something that is worth looking into. The higher the retention rate, the more likely that new staff will stay long-term. Many franchises struggle with high turnover rates in staff, but improving communication can help to stop this endless cycle.
By providing critical support to your staff members through onboarding and training, showing appreciation for the hard work they do, and creating a strong company culture can all lead to lower turnover rates and happier employees.
Ways to Keep All Franchise Locations in Sync: The Best Ways to Keep Everyone on the Same Page
It’s crucial to find effective ways to keep franchises working efficiently together despite the distance in locations!
Coming up with new ways to tackle effective communication within a franchise can help improve brand consistency and staff morale at all locations. Image courtesy of Forbes.
By taking out the time to brainstorm and come up with new methods on how to improve franchise communication at all locations, positive benefits that will affect staff and sales can be seen almost immediately.
Here are some of the best ways to improve franchise communication–and to do it the correct way!
Add Digital Signage to All Locations
One of the biggest and best forms of communication that can be added to all locations of a franchise is with digital signage–an excellent form of technology that allows for creativity to blossom through content creation, and even improves employee engagement, productivity, and communications all around. Digital signage uses three key components–a LED/LCD monitor or screen, a media player, and a content management system (CMS) to create content that can be displayed to alert staff of anything from changes to franchise policies, uniform standards, compliances, announce company news or important mandatory training courses, or even simply be a great way to recognize staff for their hard work and dedication.
Choose Shift as the Ultimate Method for Tackling Difficult Communication in Franchises
When considering digital signage, there are a ton of CMS platforms to choose from that it can be daunting to choose the right one for the franchise. Shift is an excellent, all-around CMS platform that makes it its mission to effectively deepen and improve communications with staff in many popular franchises–such as Wing Stop, Subway, Jersey Mike’s, Chick-Fil-A, and many more.
Shift can make a huge difference in how your staff interact and handle their job responsibilities by providing them with support and making them feel valued for the work they put in each and every shift (literally!). It also has its main feature–the Content Navigator–which features remote capabilities to create, edit, modify, schedule, and publish content onto any digital signage screen in real-time. With no waiting around, Shift paired with digital signage can help to create a supportive work environment that can boost employee engagement and improve internal communications to keep everyone on the same page regardless of position or location.
Provide Regular Meetings For All Staff
There are lots of effective ways to improve communications within a franchise, but one of the best is for managers of locations to hold weekly meetings with all staff members. By holding weekly or bi-weekly meetings, it can be a way to discuss any concerns that staff may have, issues that need to be handled, and even be a way to provide updates within the franchise as a whole.
This can alert staff of new promotional deals and sales, inform them of new policy and uniform changes, and just be a simple and effective way to keep all locations up-to-date and working cohesively together by also keeping up with brand and operational consistency.
Take Advantage of Digital Tools
Technology is one of your best friends when it comes to communicating effectively in a franchise, which is why taking advantage of the digital tools that you have right at your fingertips is crucial. Many digital tools–such as Slack, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Trello–are great ways to message and collaborate with staff in real-time, and the common goal of all of them is to remain consistent with brand messaging and information sharing.
Many of these are for internal communication and chat purposes that can provide instant messaging to speak to one staff member or a team as a whole, or use video conferencing and meeting features to speak face-to-face regardless of location. Other digital tools can help in project management and collaboration specifically while Learning Management Systems (LMS) can assist with online training and onboarding to make it easier to train new hires or expand training to long-term staff.
Add Surveys and Feedback Loops to Gain Notable Insight From Staff
No business is perfect, and while reviews from customers are great to take in–it’s also crucial to hear back from your staff as well. When you’re trying to gauge job satisfaction, concerns, and suggestions that can help make your staffs’ lives better while working at any franchise, it’s important to provide a platform for them to have a voice through surveys and feedback is crucial.
It’s important for all staff to know that their voice matters within the franchise, and it is also a great way to gauge how happy and satisfied that they are within their position. Surveys and feedback loops where staff can put their input in leads to higher retention rates, lower costs from hiring new staff, improves engagement, and even helps to foster a supportive community. Employees can have their chance to offer up their own ideas on marketing methods, changes that should be implemented throughout the franchise, and how to improve service for customers.
Implement Mentor Programs For New Franchisees
For many franchisees that are new to taking over and running a specific location within the franchise, it can be quite intimidating until you get the hang of things. From managing a team of staff, scheduling them, dealing with customer complaints, and simply just making sure that operations are running efficiently can be daunting–which is why implementing mentor programs is one of the best ways to make sure that new franchisees are stepping into their new location with the knowledge needed for success.
What is one of the best ways to train a new franchisee? It’s simple–with the help of senior franchisees, they’ll be able to give their insight into the ins-and-outs of managing a specific location with their own personal experience to help guide them to success. Using structured “show-and-tell” methods, on-site training and shadowing, and even role playing scenarios can help set up the new franchisee with the knowledge needed to help them get through any challenge that they may face.
Foster a Connection with the CEO or President With Monthly Video Updates
Many people starting out within a franchise are unfamiliar with the big man behind the success of it. The CEO or president of the company started small and slowly built the franchise into the success that it is today, and it’s important for them to get involved with all of their team members regardless of their rung on the ladder. Having the CEO send out monthly video updates or messages is a great way to build and foster a connection with all staff in any location.
The CEO of a franchise can easily build a connection with all of their staff through simple, encouraging messages through a video where the staff can feel closer to the company, along with it providing a sense of authenticity as well. This is a great form of consistent communication that can humanize leadership, build trust, and even show vulnerability that every staff member can relate to and appreciate.
Improve Franchise Communication With These Easy Steps and Foster a Connection in All Locations
It shouldn’t be difficult to build a franchise with staff that are motivated and feel connected to not only the work they do but the people within it regardless of position. Finding new ways to expand communications in all franchise locations can be troublesome, but with the right technology and tools it can lead to its success with happy and satisfied staff.
Consider using Shift for all of your CMS creations and improve communications within your franchise no matter the location!
