The Manager Multiplier: Your Best Retention Strategy Is Already on Your Org Chart

Here’s a number worth sitting with: Franchise employee engagement stands at 83%. The national average, according to Gallup’s most recent research, sits at 31%. 

Employee engagement surveys of more than 11,000 franchise employees at both the corporate and unit level tell us exactly where that advantage is being built, and what leaders can do to keep widening the gap.

The short answer: Invest in your managers and nearly everything else improves.

Great Managers Are Your Biggest Competitive Advantage

Three of the top five highest-scoring areas across the entire FBR Franchising at WORK survey were directly tied to manager behavior. Nearly 9 in 10 employees said their manager is professional and respectful, cares about their success, and communicates openly with them. Those aren’t soft feelings. It’s the engine driving a franchise sector that dramatically outperforms the rest of the American workforce on engagement.

The research confirms what the best franchise operators already know intuitively. Strong managers don’t just improve morale, they create resilience. They smooth over operational friction, hold teams together during uncertainty, and build the kind of trust that keeps people engaged even when other conditions aren’t perfect. 

89% of franchise employees say their manager cares about their success, is professional and fair, and communicates openly with them.

This is an enormous asset, and one worth protecting. Surveying employees at the unit level, for example, gives franchisors a continuous read on manager effectiveness across locations, making it possible to identify what’s working and replicate it at scale before small issues have a chance to grow. 

Where the Cracks Are Showing

Every strong survey has its growth opportunities, and FBR’s research is candid about where franchise organizations have room to improve. Compensation satisfaction, career visibility, recognition, and well-being are the areas employees most want to see investment—but they’re also the areas where relatively modest, intentional action by managers and HR leaders creates outsized results when it comes to franchise employee engagement.

Compensation

While compensation satisfaction is the lowest-rated measure at 68%, it is in many ways a communication and equity challenge as much as a pay challenge. Employees want to see a clear connection between performance and reward, and they’re particularly attuned to pay gaps between new hires and long-tenured colleagues.

Transparent raise structures and pay equity reviews address that perception directly. Women and Gen Z workers—who are 21% and 33% more likely, respectively, to feel undercompensated—represent a significant opportunity to strengthen engagement among some of the most valuable parts of your workforce.

Franchise Business Review’s Franchise Industry Compensation Report includes salary comparisons for 40 distinct franchise roles representing 6,100 specific positions, as well as detailed information on workforce trends and the hiring outlook for franchising.

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Career Development and Recognition

Career growth and recognition tell a similar story. Employees who can see a path forward in your organization are more engaged, more productive, and more loyal. Yet, 1 in 4 don’t see a long-term opportunity for their career, and only 78% feel positive about receiving recognition for a job well done. Managers are the most natural vehicle for making those conversations happen regularly, not just at annual review time.

Employee Well-Being

Employee well-being is another area where the franchise sector is already ahead of the national curve. Overall well-being sits at 80%, with only 3% of employees reporting poor well-being. The opportunity here is to stay proactive. Employees are navigating real external pressures: economic uncertainty, cost-of-living stress, and the general anxiety of a turbulent geopolitical environment. Managers are uniquely positioned to recognize and acknowledge when employees are struggling and offer practical support—flexible scheduling, wellness tools, mental health resources—to build the kind of loyalty that shows up in retention numbers.

AI Is a Manager Multiplier…If You Use It That Way

Here’s the part that doesn’t get enough attention: as companies lean out, it’s often middle management that disappears first. Bigger teams, fewer managers, more on every manager’s plate. And it’s happening at exactly the moment we need managers to do more, not less.

AI is reshaping this dynamic in genuinely complex ways. When AI is used well, it creates real productivity gains. It can reduce administrative burden, surface performance data faster, and free up managers to spend more time on the work that actually requires human judgment. The more important strategic question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to deploy it in a way that strengthens rather than hollows out the manager layer. 

Industry-wide trends show that AI-driven efficiency efforts sometimes result in leaner management structures—larger teams, fewer managers, more on each manager’s plate. That can work in the short term. But the FBR data is a useful reminder of what managers actually do: they are directly responsible for team engagement, culture, and performance. When manager bandwidth shrinks, those outcomes follow.

The franchise organizations best positioned to sustain their engagement advantage will be those that treat AI as a tool for making managers more effective, not a rationale for having fewer of them. That means using technology to reduce friction in their day-to-day and protect the time they need to nurture their teams. 

5 Ways to Keep Building the Advantage

The data points clearly to where franchise ops and HR leaders can invest for the highest return on engagement. Here’s where to focus:

1. Invest in manager development before anything else.

Manager training that goes beyond operational competency—that teaches coaching, active listening, recognizing burnout, and having hard conversations—is the single highest-leverage investment you can make. Equip managers to lead, not just supervise.

2. Make career paths visible and concrete.

One in four franchise employees can’t see where they’re going in your organization. That’s a retention emergency. Employees who believe in their career trajectory are more engaged, more productive, and more loyal. Build that visibility intentionally. Not just in annual reviews, but in regular manager-level conversations.

3. Build transparent, equitable compensation structures.

The compensation data is hard to ignore. Rising wages haven’t translated into rising satisfaction, in part because employees are comparing themselves to each other, and the gaps are visible. Pay equity reviews, transparent raise structures, and addressing the new-hire versus tenured-employee pay gap aren’t just HR best practices, they’re retention strategies

4. Listen at the unit level.

The engagement advantage franchising holds is built location by location. Unit-level employee surveys give franchisees and franchisors the visibility to see what’s working, replicate it, and surface issues before they escalate. It’s also how you identify your best managers and learn from what they’re doing right.

5. Treat well-being as an operational priority.

Franchise employees are already performing well by national standards, but the organizations that pull ahead are the ones that support the whole person, not just the job function. Flexible scheduling, mental health resources, and financial planning tools aren’t soft perks anymore. They’re part of what a competitive employer looks like right now.

The Manager Effect Is Real—And It’s Measurable

Franchising’s engagement lead over the broader workforce didn’t happen by accident. It was built by franchise organizations that invested in their managers, developed their people, and created cultures where employees feel valued and see a future.

The FBR employee satisfaction data is a clear confirmation of that formula as well as a roadmap for how to keep building on it. The organizations that will widen this lead in the years ahead are the ones treating their people leaders as a strategic asset. Great managers are the engine of great franchise performance. Invest accordingly.

Franchise Business Reviews helps hundreds of franchise organizations measure and improve employee satisfaction. Find out how your organization stacks up! Request a free 10-minute demo to see how you can get a confidential assessment of your company culture and employee engagement.

About the Data

Data referenced in this post is sourced from the 2025 Franchising at WORK Report, published by Franchise Business Review (FBR). The study surveyed over 11,000 employees across franchise organizations, including nearly 9,000 unit-level and 2,200 corporate HQ employees. Research was completed in June 2025.

Research for the 2026 Franchising at WORK Report is currently underway. Learn more about how to participate in the research and qualify for FBR’s Employee Satisfaction Awards. 

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