Franchisors have valuable data, insights, and best practices to support franchisees with almost any area of the franchised business model, but one area tends to be more ambiguous than others – employment. Many franchisees make their own employment decisions: designing their own recruiting process, controlling their hiring decisions, and compiling an employee benefits package. This level of franchisee independence is critical to avoiding joint-employment on behalf of the franchisor. However, the franchisor often has insight into industry recruiting trends, pitfalls, and effective hiring practices. As we mentioned in a previous post, franchisors can avoid joint-employer implications, while still delivering value, by offering optional resources to franchisees. This post will go into detail on a few resources that can provide tremendous value to franchisees:
Careers Page Portal
The franchise brand is the most valuable asset to a franchisee – attracting customer and job seekers alike. Franchisors who provide a branded, central careers portal for their franchisees are capitalizing on this brand power and setting their franchisees up to attract quality candidates. The franchisee maintains the direct relationship with the partner (a job posting platform or applicant tracking system) while the franchisor website acts as conduit, hosting the careers page and aggregating all franchisee postings. Since all active job positions from all franchisees are in one place, job seekers can apply through the brand directly to any franchisee.
Encourage Hiring Education
Many franchisees have little to no experience with HR or hiring practices. From writing compelling job descriptions and screening applicants to asking the right interview questions, it’s easy to for new business owners to feel overwhelmed when navigating the world of hiring. Referring to the experts is the the best guidance a franchisor can provide. Encourage franchisees to educate themselves on hiring guidelines and employment law, and advise them to seek out reputable HR resources. With a deeper understanding of making great hires, franchisees can institute best practices to grow their business and help build a trusted franchise brand.
Preferred Partner Relationships
Franchisors can provide value and even a competitive edge by recommending partners that have proven success for other franchisees. For example, a franchisor might partner with an Applicant Tracking System provider like CareerPlug to offer an option to franchisees for distributing jobs and managing the hiring process. This can allow franchisor to incorporate brand standards while the franchisee-partner relationship is managed independently (an important distinction in relation to co-employment). With this setup, both franchisor and franchisee benefit: franchisees from having expert hiring resources and franchisors from the success that follows when franchisees make better hiring decisions and grow their business.
Next Steps
Evaluate where your franchisees struggle with their employment processes and consider how you can provide resources and expertise as a franchisor. When your franchisees hire great people, grow their businesses, and increase their revenues, everyone wins. To learn more about the ways your franchise system could benefit from this optional, resource-based approach to franchisee support, contact our team!
Please note: The information in this blog post is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but none of the information herein should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion.
