Load One - Blog #covid-19

How You Can Help Your Franchisees During COVID-19

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 09:00:01 +0800

As the global crisis marches on, more and more businesses are finding it hard-pressed to keep the lights on. It is a time of extremes, with new businesses cropping up and some being forced to close down.

For seasoned franchisors, however, this is just a bump in the road. Long months or years of planning and execution is no stranger to businesses focused on franchise development. Concerns on the future of franchising and specific industries are certainly valid. However, it's business as usual when your business is used to playing the long game.

Franchisees and small business owners, however, may feel the pressure of a locked down economy more intensely, and have lower appetite for risk. Franchising used to be a fairly low-risk investment: it still is, but how can businesses take care of their franchisors and distributors in the current crisis?

This is a Heading

It's important to reassure your franchisees and partners that you are committed to riding out and addressing this wave of uncertainty and turmoil with them. The current pandemic doesn't change the fact that franchising comes with less risk. Your support as franchisor is invaluable.

Listen to your teams' concerns and work with them to overcome difficulties they may be having. Now, more than ever, it's important to communicate and be transparent. Open communication lines can help you react as quickly as possible to on-the-ground concerns: perhaps one of your franchisees has already found a solution to a problem starting to affect a different partner.

This is a good time to step up communication frequency while the economy is very volatile. Talk to them and share insights and tips with your franchisees. This will help your partners feel that they are in good hands.

Help Them Stay on Top of Fixed Costs

Some of the biggest challenges for many brick-and-mortar franchises revolve around meeting fixed costs like mortgage, rent, wages, and the like. Every peso saved is important.

Support you can lend to your franchisees to help them manage their cost will be appreciated. You can provide guidance in negotiating with suppliers and landlords. If there are relief packages or loan opportunities that they may be applicable for, let them know about these and help them secure ones that they may need.

Helping them transition to alternative channels of selling and servicing may also be needed so they can boost their numbers. Providing them education and guidance on important aspects of transitioning to online selling, for example, may help them maintain a healthy business.

Help Them Be Kind to Their Customers

Businesses who can be kind to their customers often earn their customers' goodwill and support for the long-term. If your franchisees have a little more leeway in offering special deals to their customers, it helps build relationships and loyalty and may boost morale both ways.

You can offer complimentary services or plan extensions for customers cancelling services due to income impact. Reasonable discounts on necessities and goods may be filtered down to end consumers and provide some relief. Occasional gifts and tokens that may be given to customers will also be remembered fondly and help build loyalty and good will.

Don't Shut Your Doors on New Partners

It may seem counterintuitive to open your coffers to new franchisees and partners during this time. Many businesses are seeing losses and budget cuts in many areas. However, continuing to market to new partners and taking new channels have two effects:

You are gaining new partners invested in taking more control of their future. They, in turn, can also generate more jobs for this struggling economy. This is the long game. While margins may be thin now, deepening your pool of franchisees will only solidify your business for the future.
It sends a confidence boost to your current franchisees. If they see you expanding, it sends a signal that this current situation is just another bump in the road that will soon pass. Don't underestimate the morale boost it will give your team.

If you have potential partners who are hesitant, it may help them to know that many similar-minded people have good projections on starting their businesses. Franchise Insights conducted a buyer sentiment survey last March that shows over 55% of respondents agree that now is a good time to start a business.

Source: https://www.franchiseinsights.com/franchise-development/buyer-sentiment-survey-franchise-inquirers-looking-past-pandemic-effects/

While 19.2% of respondents have put their plans to start a business on hold, the majority still believe that business conditions will improve in the next three months.

Keep Moving Forward

It is important that franchisors take the reins in moving forward through the economic crisis for their franchisees. Shared input and cooperation from your partners are important. But now, more than ever, a united front that is quick to establish guidelines and adopt better ways of doing business during the pandemic can turn the tide of business for the whole organization.

Remember these four tips:

Encourage and reassure your franchisees.
Help them stay on top of fixed costs.
Help them be kind to their customers.
Don't shut your doors on new partners.

Continue to invest in your franchisees and improve your business. Step up communication and pivot quickly if needed. Be transparent and clue in your partners to possible changes in the pipeline.

Together, we will get through this pandemic. We heal as one.

Raise Engagement of Remote Employees With These 5 Tips

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0800

Remote offices and working from home are now a staple of doing business in this lockdown reality. For better or worse, companies need to embrace remote working arrangements due to health, safety, and logistics concerns.

Whether your business operates on a fully-remote or hybrid setup, the biggest challenge is ensuring employee engagement.

Some managers have fallen into the pitfall of assuming they need to micro-manage and run day-long conference meetings to ensure that their team is working. The result are disgruntled managers and employees alike, both chained to their desks but with subpar productivity.

Don't let your employees run themselves ragged in a time when staying healthy is crucial. There are more ways to ensure productivity and engagement than looking over employees' proverbial shoulders when they are working remotely.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Provide Context and Define Goals

Oftentimes, we take for granted that our teams understand the company’s goals and where they fit into it. Unfortunately, only 40% actually know what the goals of the company are. 60% of your employees are investing time and effort into doing their jobs but possibly aren’t contributing to the company focus.

This is a bigger issue for remote employees, where sometimes, the adage “out of sight, out of mind” applies. Make sure your employees know what your business’ long-term and short-term goals are.

Help your team understand where they fit into those goals: top-down memos can be lost in translation, but sitting down and talking to your team about how they contribute directly to the goals can help them focus their efforts.

Encourage Communication

Talk is cheap. But don’t just talk--communicate. Communicate company goals, communicate weekly targets, communicate roadblocks and solutions. Communication is listening and sharing, and it is important to make sure that there are open lines between all layers of your organization.

In a time when people can’t see each other regularly and nonverbal communication is challenging, ensuring approachable channels are available is important in engaging employees. Video conferencing calls are good for regular catch-ups. Chat programs might be seen as a distraction, but for remote workers, the casual, conversational vibe of a Slack channel or Google hangout is more conducive to group discussions.

It’s also important to provide more frequent feedback for employees working remotely. It may have been a practice that is relegated to annual performance reviews in more traditional settings, but when you don’t see your team on a daily basis, it’s easy to drift away and be detached from them. Frequent and regular one-on-one meetings, no matter how quick, can help keep working relationships healthy.

Provide the Tools They Need

In the past, working from home has meant limited access to the information and tools that you need to accomplish your tasks. But office tools are more than just word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications when remote offices are concerned.

While access to these are important (as well as appropriate training, if alternatives are used), other tools to collaborate and facilitate work is also important. With the necessary popularity of remote work now, this is a great time to look into tools that can help you facilitate remote collaboration.

Make sure your team is able to track tasks and projects with management tools such as Trello or Asana. Transparency on where the project is going helps with everyone’s engagement and workflow.

Trello task management board templates

Time management and remote attendance taking can help employees feel in control of their time, as well as providing important routine tasks to start off a work day.

Remote attendance tracking dashboard

File sharing platforms are also important when it comes to remote employees coordinating their deliverables. Dropbox or Google Drive are popular solutions, even allowing employees to work on one file at the same time in the cloud.

Dropbox filesharing service

Don’t underestimate setting up an Intranet site or something super simple on Google Sites or similar. Making sure that employees have access to the information that they need to do their work is important to ensure work does not stall, and they don’t waste time hunting for information.

Update Company Culture With Remote Work in Mind

It is an unfortunate fact that culturally, “working from home” was seen as an excuse to slack off in the past. No matter how well-meaning, employees have faced challenges in getting their jobs done when working remotely, and over time this has bled out into these regrettable beliefs.

But a company culture that is designed with remote employees in mind will see more success in empowering their employees to contribute more actively to company goals. Availability of tools and open communication is one thing, but actively encouraging remote collaboration and team building is important.

Some businesses arrange coworking spaces in major hubs so employees who live near each other can collaborate in person. Others highlight the remote pockets of the organization by highlighting remote teams during meetings and allowing them to present first rather than a traditional top-down approach.

Keeping remote offices in mind when planning benefits, rewards, and recognition to employees can also emphasize how seriously your company is taking remote offices. Take a look at some of these ideas some companies have started implementing:

Electricity allowances to offset employees’ higher electricity consumption due to working completely from home
Sending quality office supplies to round out their home office
Allowances for employees purchasing desks or monitors to ensure better productivity
Sending catered or delivered food to employees during company special occasions or during employees’ birthdays

Letting employees see that your company is looking out for them even if they’re not in the office pays you back by empowering and encouraging them to be more efficient at their jobs.

Remember to Review and Measure Progress

The above ideas can help you increase employee engagement, but without a way to measure progress, it will be difficult to keep them going for long, especially for programs that cost money.

Tracking employees’ Net Promoter Scores as well as taking pulse surveys can point out to you where to improve and where you are doing well in terms of engaging your employees. It can help you realign your resources to activities and initiatives that work better for your remote employees.

Conclusion

Don't fall into outdated assumptions that remote employees have to be micro-managed to ensure they get their jobs done. Focus on building an empowered workforce that has the right tools, information, and targets at hand.

Remember to:

Provide context and define goals for your employees
Encourage communication across teams and all levels
Provide the tools and information access your employees need
Update your company culture with remote work in mind
Review and measure progress to track effective initiatives and areas for improvement

If you work on engaging your employees, you won't just survive this lockdown environment: you can come out of this challenging time with an even stronger workforce.