When you think of successful franchises, the first ones that probably spring to mind are fast food chains like McDonalds and SUBWAY®. Whether you like these brands or not they are undeniably successful, and it is 'training' that has played an integral part in that success, yet each has achieved it through a different training mechanism.
McDonald's say they have just over 31,000 local restaurants, in 118 countries on their website. This franchise realized the importance of training from day one. The world famous Hamburger University that opened in 1961, was built to emphasize consistent restaurant operations procedures, service, quality and cleanliness. It actually provides such a high level of training that the restaurant manager and mid-management curriculum is eligible for about two years of college credits. To top it off, they teach the curriculum in 28 languages just to make sure no one is disadvantaged. Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonalds, began his empire saying: “If we are going to go anywhere, we’ve got to have talent. And, I’m going to put my money in talent.”
SUBWAY® is similarly spread across 31,000+ locations in 90 countries around the world. But in contrast to McDonalds, they offer their training online at the University of Subway. Since they moved online in 2006 they are seeing huge returns on the investment they have made in their staff.
Two different franchises, two different training systems, but both hugely successful proving that either method can work. My question is - how much money do you have to spend on training? In reality not many franchises have the kind of money McDonald's has to throw at a 130,000 sq ft training facility, but nor do you need to these days. Training online is proven to achieve similar results, and online training systems do not have to be expensive. An added bonus is that some have become so intuitive and easy to use, you can pretty much get your program up and running all by yourself.
If you already run hands-on training sessions, you're half way there. Just take all of that content, push it up online in to a training system, tweak it for online viewing and you're ready to create accounts for your trainees. Not only is it a fast, efficient way to deliver a consistent message to large numbers of trainees at once (many more than can fit in a classroom), it's also the ideal mechanism to keep tabs on the progress of your teams. You'll be able to spot weaknesses in real-time, see knowledge gaps and fix them pronto.
An added benefit is that changes can be rolled out almost instantaneously. If a law changes, a product needs to be taken off the shelf or important news needs to be announced, you can be sure your online training system will get everyone up to speed immediately.
Good quality, consistent, on-going training is paramount to ensuring franchise success. While hands-on or classroom-based training might do the trick, it is very expensive and slow. An online training system achieves those same results while catering to the needs of each and every franchise, no matter how big (or small) the budget.
Why not sign up for a free trial of the Litmos online training platform now?