HR 101

How Franchises Can Get and Keep Higher-Quality Talent

Pat Brothwell

Two franchises employers discuss how they can attract and retain higher quality talent.

The International Franchise Association recently released its 2022 Labor Challenges Report and found that the top challenge facing franchise businesses today is the quality of their labor. Per the report, “The shortage across the labor force for both unskilled and skilled positions is compounded by a lack of applicants for available openings.

More than two-thirds of franchise brands have reported that their franchisee-owned businesses received few, some, or no qualified applicants for open positions over the past six months.”

While businesses across the spectrum struggle to increase their applicant traffic, franchise businesses also struggle to attract suitable applicants. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The report also indicates that 2022 will be a strong year for franchise businesses,” forecasting that franchising will end the year with more than 792,000 establishments, adding a net 17,000 new locations and contributing 3% to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”

This post will provide franchise businesses with ten actionable ways you can improve the quality of your hires while also upping your applicant traffic.

Why Does Quality of Labor Matter?
Ten Ways Franchises Can Attract and Retain Higher Quality Talent
Related Resources
About HiringThing

Why Does Quality Labor Matter?

Franchises are constantly hiring new employees. You wouldn’t be blamed for falling into the get-a-body-in-a-seat mentality—every hire is a good hire—but there are several crucial reasons why improving the quality of your hires is good for your franchise business.

A checklist of why franchise labor quality matters.

Employee retention: Hiring the right employees for the right job means they’re more likely to be happy and motivated, which will improve employee satisfaction and can improve your employee turnover.
Increased engagement: Employees who want to be working and are happy with the realities of the job they interviewed for are more likely to be engaged at work. Engaged workers are more creative, productive and boost general morale.
More innovation: Quality hires are more likely to be engaged, which leads to increased creativity and innovation.
Productivity: Quality, engaged employees are more productive. Improved productivity is good for the employee, franchisee, and franchisor. More productivity = more revenue!
Time and Money: Hiring is costly in both time and money. You're saving your franchise time and money by improving retention, increasing engagement, and getting more productive employees.

Ten Ways Franchises Can Attract Higher Quality Talent

Write Better Job Descriptions

Job descriptions are the first impression job seekers have of your organization. To attract the best-qualified talent, you’ll want to ensure your job descriptions are thorough, informative, and stand out from the thousands of other jobs posted each day.

Be Honest

Being honest may seem like a no-brainer, but organizations often try to play up the glamor or excitement of a position, even if that’s not the reality. You want your job descriptions to attract job seekers, but you also want to identify driven individuals to fill your positions. You want employees who will stay after the interview process is complete. A discrepancy between a job’s portrayal during recruiting and what a position entails is a top reason for employee churn. Well-defined, realistic job descriptions foster engagement and ensure you’re not wasting time with half-interested job seekers.

Be Straightforward

LinkedIn tested three versions of a job description using straightforward, formal, and casual tones. The straightforward tone did the best with potential job seekers. It showed quality candidates that the employer was to the point and serious about work. LinkedIn found that candidates serious about their career were 2x-4x less likely to apply to very casual job descriptions full of slang and jokes.

Use Unbiased Language

By making job descriptions more inclusive, you’re showing potential job seekers they’re welcome—you want as many qualified applicants as possible to apply for your positions. A study found that 60% of businesses show significant bias toward male-coded language in their postings. Ensure your posts are as inclusive as possible. SHRM and Monster have great resources for making your job postings more inclusive.

Reconsider Qualifications

You want to appeal to the broadest swath of candidates to find those qualified applicants, so reevaluate your “required” and “nice to have skills.” Focus less on a candidate’s past experiences and more on your expectations of them moving forward—research finds adding unnecessary qualifications is dissuading very qualified candidates.

Nurture Your Talent

You might already have a whole breadth of quality talent hiding right under your nose! Don’t discount the employees you already have. They know your processes, your product, and are already brand ambassadors. If you don’t have a program to nurture your talent and get them ready to move up the ranks in your organization, you’re doing your franchise and your employees a disservice. Promoting from within rather than recruiting externally also shows your employees your franchise values their contributions and that there’s room to grow professionally, something today’s quality job seekers want!

Start a Referral Program

85% of jobs are filled through networking, and 88% of organizations believe referrals from current employees are the best source for high-quality hires. A robust referral program is a certified way to improve the quality of your hires.

Employee referrals are 55% faster hires than candidates from job boards.
Employee referrals have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate.
47% of referral hires stay with organizations longer.

Job seekers trust your employees, too—employee voice is 3x more credible than a CEO’s by job seekers.

Showcase Company Culture

Today’s employees care about the values of their employer and workplace culture—78% of job seekers say the interview process shows them what a company values and how it treats employees. Having and showcasing your company culture as part of your brand in your job postings and the interview process will help you attract and keep quality talent engaged. A clearly defined culture also helps give your team a common purpose and keeps messaging consistent. Franchises can showcase company culture to quality talent by:

Sharing teammate contributions, goals, and professional success on your company website or social media channels.
Include employee success stories on your website or printed collateral.
Collect employee testimonials you can include on your social media or in your job postings—short videos are particularly engaging for today’s job seekers.
Include job candidates’ potential future coworkers as part of the interview process. Let them see who they’ll be working with and allow them to ask their peers questions.
Foster a strong company culture! If you don’t foster a strong company culture at work, you can’t expect your employees to authentically engage in employer-brand strengthening initiatives!

Give Candidates an Unparalleled Interview Experience

Job seekers who drop out of interview processes are often high-quality candidates. Those serious about their careers won’t put up with unwieldy applications, poor communication, or interview processes that stretch out for too long. Therefore, it’s beneficial to ensure your interview process is streamlined, barrier-free, and candidate-centric.

Today’s job seekers value convenience and strong communication in the hiring process. Franchise businesses can provide this by:

Make the application mobile-friendly: 58% of job seekers search for work on their phones, and 40% won’t apply for jobs that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Keep it short: 60% of job seekers quit filling out an online application that took too long.
Communicate well: 30% of job seekers say responsiveness is the most crucial aspect of a job candidate's experience.

Ask your current franchise employees what worked and didn’t work about your hiring process.

A bad candidate experience could end up hurting your bottom line! 32% of job seekers are unlikely to continue purchasing or doing business with a company that doesn’t respond to their job applications.

Highlight Development Opportunities (And Provide Development Opportunities)

Franchise employees work harder when they know their employer is invested in their career development. Despite this, there’s a real lack of development in the workplace today.

Research finds that 74% of employees think they don’t receive enough on-the-job training.
A lack of career development is the top reason today’s employees leave jobs—40% of employees who don’t receive thorough training leave a job within a year.
82% of employees would leave a job because of lack of career progression.

If you’re not giving your employees development opportunities, it’s time to start. Then, highlight this in a big way in your recruiting efforts.

Call out career opportunities and room to grow in your job descriptions.
Create collateral based on employee progression.
Showcase specific cases of professional development on your social media.

Better yet? Ask job candidates, even entry-level candidates, about their career goals and what on-the-job training would most interest them during the interview process.

Provide Structure to Your Interviews

Establishing a reliable, consistent, repeatable interview process will ensure you’re hiring fairly and focusing on quality rather than “gut feelings.” You can standardize your interview process by:

Utilizing asynchronous video interviews for your screenings: Asynchronous video interviews put every candidate on the same playing field (it’s also an inclusive practice that means you’ll get more candidates able to participate in the first round of interviews) when you ask them the same questions in the same cadence.
Asking the same questions to every candidate: This allows you to compare answers and ensures that the small talk that can arise in a more informal interview setting doesn’t give candidates unfair advantages because they might personally have something in common with the interviewers.
Implementing a scoring system: Scoring candidates based on predetermined criteria means interviewers have to justify scores rather than “liking their vibe” or “energy.” If designed right, high-quality candidates should receive the highest scores!

Keeping the interviews as standard as possible ensures that our biases aren’t preventing the highest quality candidates from rising to the top.

DEI Recruiting

Diversity, equity, and inclusions (DEI) efforts are important to today’s job seekers—one-third won’t apply to a company that doesn’t prioritize diversity, and 74% of millennials (the largest generation in the workforce today) believe innovative organizations foster cultures of inclusion.

Call out your commitment to DEI in your job posting and employer-branding initiatives, but only if it’s something you can back up. Today’s job seekers are savvy and will see through lip service if there’s no substance. We here at HiringThing have created The HiringThing Guide to DEI Recruiting if you need a robust resource to help reimagine your recruiting through a DEI lens.

Rethink Benefits

You’ve undoubtedly seen the headlines over the past year with franchises like Jimmy John’s offering large sign-on bonuses or McDonald’s announcing emergency childcare benefits, both done to entice more applicants in a challenging hiring market. Franchises that rely heavily on entry-level positions were unfortunately infamous in the past for long hours, low pay, and few professional benefits. With the market how it is right now, that’s not going to cut it for top candidates who have their pick of positions.

80% of today’s job seekers say employers need to evaluate the benefits they offer, and 67% say benefits are key to whether they apply for a position. The two benefits today’s job seekers are looking for are health care and flexibility (which doesn't cost an employer anything…). Evaluate what your ideal employees are looking for and see if you can offer that—54% of job seekers say lower-paying positions with good benefits appeal to them.

Offering additional benefits is 100% the most expensive suggestion on this list. Still, it can strengthen your employee brand, retain more employees, and benefit your franchise business not just in this challenging hiring climate but in the long run.

Use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

An ATS is recruiting software specifically designed to streamline, automate, and optimize the hiring process. Franchise businesses adopt applicant tracking systems to strengthen their recruiting and help net higher-quality talent.

70% of recruitment professionals believe investing in technology is the best way to strengthen recruiting.
75% of recruiters use applicant tracking systems to find quality talent.
78% of ATS users say it’s made recruiting easier.
94% of ATS users say it’s positively impacted their hiring.
86% of ATS users say they now hire faster.
78% of recruiters who use an ATS say it’s improved the quality of their hires.

Branding Your ATS Takes Recruiting to the Next Level

Many franchises take their recruiting to the next level by branding their applicant tracking system to reflect the employer brand their franchise has worked so hard to cultivate.

Our Ten Reasons all Franchises and Multi-Location Businesses Need Branded Hiring post dives deeper into the benefits of this franchise recruiting software option.

Related Resources

About HiringThing

HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable HR technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.

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