Online franchisee training – Intuto makes it easy

Essentially, franchising is a business relationship in which the franchisor (the owner of the business) allows independent people (the franchisees) to market and distribute their goods or services, and to use the business name and branding. To get that relationship working at its most efficient, we say online franchisee training is the best way to go.

In contrast to independent businesses (of any size) there are two disparate parts to franchise training.

First, as a franchisor, you are deeply invested in the thorough and successful training of your franchisee. Their execution of your brand in their store affects your brand – nationally or internationally – as a whole, and you need to trust they are capable of doing it well. You are taking on less risk than turning your business into a chain, but you are also putting a lot of faith in your franchisees.

Second, as a franchisee, you are more than just an employee yourself. You have a direct stake in the success of the business. so treat it as your own and train your employees accordingly. We’ve discussed the benefits of onboarding and maintaining training in the past, and the same is true in this case.

We’ll focus here on effective training from the franchisor, which will have a trickle-down effect through franchisees, managers and employees, using Intuto’s online platform.

There are six key reasons to focus on online platforms when constructing your franchisee training:

Consistent training

The first, and possibly most obvious, benefit of using online training for your franchisees is consistency. Wherever they are in the country – or even the world – they can use exactly the same online program, which means the same branding, tone and information. And since brand consistency is key to a successful franchise, Intuto’s online courses are the ideal way to train your franchisees.

Operations manual

Your franchise operations manual is a vital document that maintains quality control by establishing the rules, standards and specifications of the franchise to the franchisee. It covers everything from legal requirements and obligations, accounting and stock management to dress standards and telephone manner. Literally every aspect of running the business should be covered in a franchise operations manual – and that is a lot of information. Hard copies of manuals can be overwhelmingly large, hard to navigate, easy to lose and quick to go out of date. Storing your operations manual virtually, within your Intuto online franchisee training, eliminates all these problems, and makes it much more likely that franchisees will refer back to it regularly and keep your brand on track.

HQ training

As much as we believe online training is the most effective form of education, there will always be a place for formal face-to-face training. It’s necessary – especially in a franchise situation which requires a group of disparate businesses to act like a family – but bringing franchisees together in a single location for intense training sessions is time consuming, expensive and less effective than regular and consistent training. Online training for franchisees is an essential addition to HQ training – a less expensive and less time consuming way to maintain training.

Ongoing onsite learning

Equally, while learning on the job can be an effective (if stressful) approach to franchising, online training is an essential addendum. You can only spend so long assisting a new franchisee with the business. Intuto’s online training program gives franchisees access to the operations manuals, allows them to access all the training modules and has a comments section that functions as a help forum for when they get stuck. Plus, if changes are made to any element of the franchise, Intuto’s courses can be updated at any time to adjust policies or systems. You can choose to re-enrol participants at regular intervals and send reminders to view the new material.

Testing and checkpoints

You and your franchisees are jointly responsible for the success of your brand, so you want to be confident that they know what to do, and how to do it well. You never want to assume that you did a perfect job as a teacher, and certainly never assume that they are a perfect student. Intuto’s online courses allow you to give regular tests and create checkpoints to keep you on the same page.

Tracking and Feedback

Finally, you can track participants' progress with their training to check that they are up-to-date and compliant. You can see test results in Intuto and send reminders to complete courses. User feedback via course comments can also help you improve your training content and allow you and your franchisees to work together to grow your business.