Franchising World Magazine
March 2012
http://www.franchise.org
Ensuring Effective Training Material is Distributed
Some of the franchise industry’s high-achieving multiunit franchisees provide their views on current topics of the day.
QUESTION: Within your own multi-unit organization, how do you cascade training material from your franchisor to the unit-level management?
Azim Saju: “Trained unit-level management positively impacts revenues, expenses, guest satisfaction and market share. In the hotel industry, the franchisor provides training material in two primary forms: through brand performance consultants or BPCs which are individuals who visit the hotel and provide training opportunities directly to our management; and through educational seminars at meetings and conventions. Follow-up and engaged upper-level management/ownership are essential to cascading franchisor training material down to unit-level management.
One of the primary ways to cascade the franchisor’s training down to unit-level management is for the uppermanagement/ownership group to be engaged with their managers. Engaged ownership is very important in properly disseminating the training material our franchisor provides. This type of ownership creates an environment which fosters learning and partnerships with the brand. In particular, this means when our BPCs visit our hotel and provide training opportunities at the hotel level, we ask for written follow up from the BPC. After this follow up, we ask our management to engage the BPCs by informing the BPCs how they have executed on and benefited from the training. I prefer that the follow up is in writing via e-mail with a copy to me. This way I am also engaged in this process.
The other manner in which to cascade the training material down to management is through franchisorsponsored educational seminars and conventions. The benefit to this is that our management team views these events as a perk given that they get away from the hotel, usually travel to another state and get to see another part of the country. They get to do all of this while participating in the franchisor-sponsored learning events. My experience has been that they usually return to the hotel from such conventions not only having gained knowledge, but also recharged from having been away from the hotel and energized to share the knowledge they have gained with their team.
Regardless of the medium in which the franchisor communicates the training material, engaged upper-level management/ownership and follow up are keys to ensuring that the training material cascades down to unit-level management.”