Franchise operations emerged from the pandemic through a period of intense change. The phrase “sink or swim” felt especially relevant as brands adapted to labor constraints, changing consumer behavior, travel restrictions, and operational uncertainty.
To understand those realities, FranConnect hosted a webinar combining findings from its Operations data analysis with feedback from customers to help COOs decide where and how to deploy human capital and technology resources.
During the presentation, we polled an audience of 200 franchise operations executives about two issues: how the labor shortage was affecting their business, and whether in-person visits had increased or stayed the same after vaccine rollouts began.
Labor Shortage Impact
The poll confirmed a widespread challenge: roughly three-quarters of respondents said they were moderately or severely affected by the labor shortage.
While labor-market conditions change over time, brands should consider both immediate recruiting tactics and longer-term changes to the operating model. The original article also pointed readers to recruiting tactics and incentives for new hires.
In-Person vs. Virtual Site Visits
The second poll asked how brands’ site-visit strategies had changed. Only 10% of respondents said they had shifted to virtual visits and planned to keep them that way, underscoring the perceived value of in-person field visits.
At the same time, the largest group wanted a healthier balance between in-person and virtual activity, suggesting that many brands wanted to retain some of the efficiency gains of virtual audits without giving up the benefits of face-to-face coaching and inspection.
The two legacy poll graphics were hosted on external HubSpot assets and are not present in staging Media. Those image dependencies have been removed while the underlying poll results remain intact.
The Role of Franchise Operations Teams
The webinar, The Role of the Franchise Operations Team Today, also covered how operations teams can achieve:
- Operational excellence through consistency, service quality, brand compliance, and field execution.
- Improved unit-level performance by centralizing and analyzing operational data and using playbooks for remediation and improvement.
- Staff enablement and support through franchisee communication, engagement, onboarding, and training support.
- Legal and process compliance through stronger data management, collaboration with legal teams, and a single source of truth.
The central lesson remains useful: field operations should be measured as a strategic growth function, not simply a compliance activity.
