Creating a Franchise Work Culture that Elevates Employees, Customers, and Success

Picture being able to give your franchise employees the best of all worlds: the support and team culture they need to be engaged at work, direct feedback from customers, and an opportunity to earn more money for great work — and doing it all without breaking the bank. 

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t!

According to the Achievers 2023 Engagement and Retention report, employees prioritize feeling supported, cared for, and valued more than making extra money. Of course, that doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter — everyone wants to feel rewarded for their hard work. 

With the right tools, you can take advantage of employee-driven growth by creating a work culture built on healthy feedback, financial rewards for a job well done, and a strong sense of team unity. The result? Everyone wins — your customers, your employees, and your business.

What Should Feedback Look Like?

In order to create employee-driven growth, you’ll need to have your employees working effectively, which requires frequent feedback. The problem is that traditionally,  employees feel like they only get feedback when they’re doing something wrong and never when they’re doing well. In fact, 72% of employees report getting praise less than once a week. As a result, they get demotivated and disengage, which makes them more likely to leave the company. 

The solution is to ensure that you are giving both positive and negative feedback — with an emphasis on the positive. Research on high-performing business teams shows that the ideal ratio is 5 positive comments for every 1 negative one. 

Unfortunately, managers are very busy. That’s why the best way to get feedback is to ask your customers immediately after their transaction, perhaps by using a tool like Edge to follow up with customers by SMS text message.

For example, Amazing Lash Studio in Peoria, AZ, was able to use Edge to increase their average Google review rating from 3.5 stars to 4.8 stars, increase revenue by 28%, and improve the team’s productivity — all by encouraging customers to leave reviews directly after they received services at the studio and rewarding staff for excellent reviews. That’s what employee-driven growth can look like in your organization.

Encouraging customer reviews also allows you to notice trends in both positive and negative service. When you address them with your team members, you’ll be referencing several customers’ feedback rather than a single manager’s observation, which can make the conversation easier. 

Rewarding Great Work

Regularly collecting feedback from customers will show you that many of your employees are doing a great job meeting and exceeding customer expectations. That’s great news!

The next step is to reward your team members for their great work, which will incentivize them to continue to be excellent — ultimately driving growth for your business with excellent customer experiences. 

There are a lot of different ways to recognize excellent performance, and it’s often a good idea to use multiple approaches. When you do, you’ll create a positive workplace culture, which creates an engaged and resilient team.

Here are some recognition options to consider for a franchisee.

Cash

Most employees appreciate the ability to earn extra money for great performance. You can award gift cards, cash bonuses, or periodic bonus checks.

One of the easiest ways to offer cash for excellent results is to use an app like Edge . In a seamless process, Edge encourages your customers to leave reviews mentioning employees after a positive experience and then rewards those employees financially. 

This allows you to create employee-driven growth: investing your marketing dollars in your team instead of in some distant marketing agency. Your team is happy and engaged, your customers benefit, and your business sees excellent financial results.

Public or Private Appreciation

Some employees love being praised in front of the rest of the team, while others like a quieter moment of appreciation. It’s essential to know your high-performing team members’ preferences so that you can respond accordingly.

For those who like public praise, bring up their great results in a team meeting or, if you’re using an app like Edge to track results, you can put a shout-out in the Social Feed. You might even want to share it on the company’s social media accounts! If someone prefers private kudos, you can write them a note praising their work or express your appreciation in a one-on-one conversation.

Employee Recognition Awards

Another way to recognize employee performance is to create awards employees can win every month or quarter. You can give out plaques or trophies, which can be inexpensive to have made but very meaningful to your team.

You can combine these top-performer awards with a specific cash bonus as well to make them even more valuable so that employees work hard to win the awards.

Celebrations and Events

Done well, celebrations and events can be a great way to recognize top employees or the achievement of a goal by the whole team.

What’s important is to make sure the celebration happens outside of normal business hours, which you can do by closing early one day, having an off-site dinner or party, or arranging for a group activity. Make sure you take into consideration your employees’ physical, mental, and emotional differences when creating these events. For example, before arranging a bike ride, escape room, or ziplining outing, you’d want to ensure no one would be excluded.

Some ways to make the event special include creating a tribute video showcasing fun moments as your team worked to achieve the goal, a thank you speech from a manager or executive, or someone taking pictures so a scrapbook of the event can be created and shared with the team.

Building Team Unity

Having a strong sense of community and belonging at work is not only a key reason that employees stay at a job, it helps them perform better as well and is a key component of a work culture that creates employee-driven growth.

Gallup found that employees who have best friends at work:

• Engage customers more effectively
• Get more done in less time
• Have fewer accidents and maintain a safer workplace
• Have fun while they’re working
• Are more likely to be extremely satisfied with their employer

Building this sense of team unity is essential to getting great results for your business. Don’t settle for cheesy team-building that everyone hates, though. Instead, focus on ways to get your employees working together and competing in fun ways.

For example, scavenger hunts and trivia contests are great ways to help people work together while having fun. But there’s only so much time you can take people away from work, so it’s even better to create contests based on work-related goals.

For example, Edge helped The Grove, a dispensary in Nevada, create competitions with goals based on key business metrics. By integrating with their point-of-sale system, The Grove’s employees could see their results in real-time on the Edge app, through a web-based login, and on the SmartHub-enabled Breakroom TV. 

The result? The Grove saw an increase in revenue of $97,000 over the previous month and employees were excited about the competition. When one ended, they immediately wanted to know when they next would begin. 

Creating a sense of teamwork and camaraderie while serving customers effectively and driving business results is definitely a win-win-win situation! 

Create a Culture of Employee-Driven Growth Today

Your employees can be the growth engine of your business if you build a work culture that rewards your team for giving great service. You’re investing your marketing into your employees, incentivizing them to create customer experiences that drive business growth.

One of the best ways to leverage employee-driven growth is by taking advantage of Edge's tools to reward excellent performance, improve your digital review profile, and encourage friendly competition and team-building in your business. 

We’d love to help you get started. Contact Edge for a demo today!