7 Reasons Why Franchisors Don’t Ask Employees for Feedback (and Why They’re Bogus)

If hiring and retention are important to your business, measuring employee engagement should be priority #1

Business owners continue to name employee retention and hiring as one of the top challenges in running and growing their businesses, and yet many still aren’t taking the steps necessary to address it. 

I recently had a chance to share some data with Entrepreneur about the link between asking employees for feedback and retention. When we ask franchisors why they don’t regularly survey their employees, all too often these are some of the responses we hear. If any of them are the reason you’re not asking for formal employee feedback, here’s why you should reconsider:  

1. “We’re too small.”
We recommend you start when you have 10+ employees on your team to establish a formal process for inviting feedback as your team grows. We share our standard questions with any franchisor who asks us for them, so if you aren’t ready to work FBR yet you can get started on your own.

2. “We know our team so well, they tell us what they think all the time.”
That’s great! But having a formal process for them to offer feedback can help you tie manager goals and feedback to their performance reviews or bonus structures. Collecting and sharing feedback with the team can create a more transparent and inclusive culture. You are making them feel heard—a crucial part of the process in building a strong brand.

3. “We did a survey ourselves internally.”
This is an excellent place to start! However, working with a third party results in higher participation, greater trust from your team that their feedback is truly anonymous, and provides benchmarking data to see how your business compares to others in franchising.

4. “We don’t have the time to execute this survey.”
When you work with FBR, there’s almost no time required on your part. All you do is give us the list of employee names and email addresses. We provide you with a templated communication to notify your team, and we take care of the rest!

5. “We don’t have the bandwidth to respond to the feedback.”
If retention is important to you, we recommend you make the time to ask and respond. You need to know what potential issues are popping up before they lead to actively disengaged or disgruntled employees, or a mass exodus. Those issues don’t go away just because you aren’t asking about them.

6. “We’re afraid to hear what they think.”
It can be scary, but it might not be as bad as you think…or it could be much worse. But you can’t improve what you don’t know about. If you don’t reveal your blind spots, you are at risk of losing some great employees.

7. “We KNOW our team is happy.”
Great, then work with FBR to have a third party verify it. Our survey is an excellent tool to check your gut and quantify what sets you apart as a great place to work so you can start using that to recruit potential employees. 

If any of these resonate with you, or if we missed some thoughts that are holding you back, we want to hear from you. You can’t keep great people on your team if you aren’t providing them the opportunity to tell you about their experience. You can’t help managers get better at taking care of their people and leading if you don’t give them data to measure their success. If you’re still hesitating about asking for feedback, reach out to talk more—we’ll even share our standard survey questions and walk you through them.

Ready to start surveying your employees? Click here to get started or request a free 10-minute demo.

Related Resource: The Ultimate Guide to Employee Engagement for Franchises

Employee engagement is critical to the success (or survival) of franchise organizations, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to foster engagement.

Download your free eBook to learn how to:

• Recognize barriers holding employees back from fully engaging
• Create a supportive and engaging workplace culture
• Make engagement a key part of your hiring and retention strategy
• Measure and benchmark your team’s engagement against other franchise employers

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