How to Hire for Franchise Operations Teams

Franchise operations is such a valuable, unique department in the franchise system.

SOPs, projects, and systems are the areas where a lot of operations folks thrive in the business space — but in franchising, operations is also the department that leads the franchisee support, which, in turn, leads to overall brand and system success.

When a franchise system has happy, profitable franchisees, you have higher royalties, healthier franchisee lifecycles, and better validators for your franchise recruitment.

Ultimately, franchisees who are compliant, profitable, and raving fans of their system are the key to a successful franchise brand. Operations is the department that works the closest with owners and has the biggest impact on their success.

Effective franchise operations team = major value to the system.

Because operations are such a valuable part of a franchise company, building out your ops team is a big deal – from COOs to VPs to Field Coaches. In this article, we’re going through the common mistakes to avoid, and hiring practices that will help you build out a successful operations team for your brand.

When Franchise Operations Teams Start to Struggle

When it comes to building your ops team, we see (and hear from our roundtable members) a lot of franchise brands struggle with building their operations department when they reach around 50-80 units – and often even before that.

Up until around 50 units, typically the franchisor/leadership team has done a lot of the hands-on franchisee support and coaching. 

Either that, or they brought someone onto the operations part of their business as a younger brand, and they by default started helping franchise owners with reactive/hotline support.

This can work okay at the very beginning of growing a franchise brand because, at that point, franchise owners are typically seeking a lot of reactive-type support.

But as a brand grows, and franchise owners are either really struggling or hitting big goals and seeking more, a more proactive approach to franchisee support and a more structured ops team is necessary to take your brand to that next level.

Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring for Franchise Operations Teams

When a franchise brand is ready to really properly build its operations team, there is one big mistake we see over and over:

Hiring solely based on past experience.

Now, before we dive deeper, let me just say that hiring someone who has experience in franchising or franchise operations is not a bad thing – it can be great!

But what we’ve witnessed many times in our work with franchise brands is when a franchise leadership team is only focused on finding someone with experience, and they don’t vet for so many more important traits, experiences, and skill sets.

Here is why past experience is not the end-all-be-all for a franchise operations team candidate:

1) They may bring an ego into your company

It doesn’t happen all the time, but when a team is at a crucial stage of growth and is seeking someone with loads of experience, there can sometimes be a sense of ego that a candidate comes in with, which is damaging to company culture.

2) They can bring bad habits from their past experiences

Just because someone has experience does not mean they have good habits and strategies that they’ll be bringing to your team. You don’t want bad habits being brought into your system.

3) They may have a more traditional approach to franchisee support.

A traditional approach to franchisee support is not too different from what you’ve already been doing, reactive/hotline support, answering questions as they come up, providing resources and leaving franchisees to it, etc.

A more modern approach is proactive business coaching for franchisees, getting ahead of problems before they happen, creating franchisee communities, getting buy-in to compliance, and more.

The best way to overcome this common mistake in hiring franchise operations teams is to shift your mindset from:

“The most important thing is to hire someone who has done this in another franchise system” to “We can hire someone with a more limited experience in franchising and still have them be successful”

Strategies for Hiring Successful Franchise Operations Team Members

Alright. You’ve shifted your mindset and are aware of some mistakes to watch out for, and now you’re ready to learn the strategies for hiring a successful franchise ops team member.

First up: Get clear on the role of the franchise operations team. I talked about the role at the beginning of this article — to manage the operations of the business, protect the brand standards, and support franchise owners for success.

Next, know what qualities are priorities in this role. There are lots of things that can be taught or trained, but some things are a lot harder to teach, like soft skills or leadership.

What to look for in your franchise operations team:

• Experience in business, leadership, and people management.
• Alignment on your company’s mission/values/culture.
• Soft skills like active listening, conflict resolution, and empathy.
• A modern/proactive approach to supporting franchisees for success.
• Open to training, learning, and professional development.

And having experience in franchising is great! It just shouldn’t supersede these other traits and skills. 

When seeking out people for your ops team, try thinking of other career paths that use soft skills, are very people-oriented, and align with your company’s values. Then, get the word out! Be open to people in different areas of business who have the qualities you’re seeking.

When vetting for some of these qualities, a tool we love using is ChatGPT — to get ideas for how to interview for specific skills and traits.

Another great resource for hiring is the Field Coach Assessment, a benchmark of top-performing Field Coaches on operations teams that you can use in your vetting process to assess specific behavioral characteristics.

Tools for Training New Franchise Operations Team Members

Franchising is a people business. It’s big on relationships and creating successful dynamics between the home office team and franchise owners. 

To help train on this important dynamic, and other skills we’ve talked about in this article, check out some of the tools/resources below:

• Enroll your team in Academy courses
• Hire AC Inc. to train your operations team for you
• Take your ops team through your franchisee training program
• Focus on soft skills and franchisee-franchisor dynamics

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Have more questions about setting up an effective franchisee coaching framework? Get on an initial call with our team to learn more about our Field Coach training, fractional coaching services, and franchisee performance groups!

Get in touch with us!