Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue III, 2015 | Page 60

RECRUIT, RETAIN, REPEAT
Predictive Index behavioral assessment
and pre-employment screening tools also
provide valuable insights into who will be
the best fit and happiest in the job.
With nearly 200 employees, Davis—
CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Corazon
Partners, is a past franchisee of the year
recipient and founding chair of Massage
Envy’s national franchise advisory board—
focuses on hiring strong unit managers.
The general manager, he says, is the most
important job in the company and a key
ingredient of his business success. “My
advice to multi-unit owners is to make
sure you have the best unit managers in
every one of your locations. It makes all
the difference,” he says.
Robinson agrees that retention starts
at the top. He estimates that 50 percent
of the factors that predict someone’s job
success is connected to the manager and
their working environment. Millennial
employees, for instance, are generally
career-minded, engaged, and technologically savvy. They don’t want a job, he says,
they’re seeking an experience.
“Good people leave for better opportunities,” he says. “If you can’t retain them,
nothing else matters. You can have the best
recruiting funnel in the world, but if your
manager can’t provide a workplace environment that is somewhere they want to
stay, they will leave.”
Michelle and Kriss Shriver

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MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE IS S UE III, 2015

Rick Davis

Accentuate the positive
Franchisees who attract and retain great
employees also implement strategies and
programs that communicate and promote
good performance and company loyalty.

And while money still talks, it is not the
be-all and end-all. Employees are motivated by human factors such as appreciation, recognition, a sense of purpose, and
respect. “Money is a dissatisfier, not a satisfier,” says Davis. “We try to take money
off the table as a reason someone would
want to leave.”
Keeping employees is tougher in highturnover industries such as food service
and retail. Nevertheless, there are ways to
manage and boost retention rates, such as
increasing employee satisfaction through
proper onboarding, fair shift schedules,
team-building, and recognition.
It is important to catch your employees doing things right, says Shriver. Her
employee base at Tropical Smoothie is
split about evenly between part- and
full-time employees, and she documents
everything noteworthy for each, especially their accomplishments. Shriver
says many employees stick with the franchise for years, including high school
hires who stay on through college. “I
can’t point to one thing that causes that
loyalty,” she says. “But to start, we truly
care about our employees. There is no
faking that, and they can tell if you do
or don’t care.”
When working with younger generations—the mainstay of the restaurant industry—it helps to be “young at
heart,” says Shriver. The couple hosts
pool parties, holiday potlucks, employee
contests for prizes and gift cards, and
invite their employees to join them in
their many charitable works, efforts those
employees “seem to get really behind,”
she says. “What I think employees appreciate the most is thanking them when
they do a good job,” she says. “We have
a lot of high fives, fist bumps, and hugs
in our cafes!”
Today’s employees also expect and
benefit from regular, ongoing feedback.
At Massage Envy, for instance, Davis
offers each employee a monthly “cadence of conversation,” a practice that
uncovers problems sooner rather than
later, and which helps to recognize and
encourage strong employee performance
and loyalty.
In the end, Davis has found it pays to
put people ahead of profits to create a
winning team. “When we have to make
a decision between what is going to help
people and what is going to help our
margin, we tend to come down on the
side of our people.”