Contract Management

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Franchise operations manuals may seem daunting, especially for a company that has never written an operations manual before. Bewildered by the new business of franchising, with its legal requirements, franchise disclosure documents, operations manuals, training programs, etc., many companies delegate responsibility to a high-priced franchise consultant.

But using someone to write your franchise operations manual who knows literally nothing about your business, never makes any sense when everything is considered objectively. And, besides a hefty price tag of $20,000 or more to write the manuals, using franchise consultants brings another, expensive result – legal risk. Here are some drafting tips and strategies from a recognized, international franchise expert.

Why Franchise Consultants Are Risky Business
Paying someone who knows nothing about your business, and having them learn it from scratch at your expense is really just common sense. Using franchise consultants for what is a relatively easy and straightforward task has never made any sense – except to the franchise consultants who charge exorbitant amounts to write an operations manual. It’s one of those little franchise secrets that the consultants don’t ever mention or discuss.

Using a franchise consultant to write a franchise operations manual also carries legal risk. The principal legal risk comes from including inappropriate topics, chapters and policies that are commonly found in company-owned, chain operations manuals.  If these are included, as they often are in franchise operations manuals, very significant franchise liability issues arise. Because the franchise consultants are not franchise attorneys or experts, they are entirely oblivious to this risk. They don’t know where the bullets come from in franchise litigation. As a testifying and consulting franchise expert, I routinely find franchise operations manuals drafted by franchise consultants and do-it-yourself manuals containing inappropriate chapters or topics. And, because they rely on boilerplate manuals used for other clients, where (hopefully) all instances of burgers, for example, are searched and replaced with tax returns, the end result is not only dangerous – it is also very mediocre. Giving a mediocre operations manual to a franchise owner who has invested hundreds of thousands (or in some cases millions) of dollars in your franchise model is definitely not the best way to start or ensure a smooth franchise relationship.

The Best Practice Approach To Drafting Franchise Operations Manuals
Besides the expensive and legally risky approach there is another, best franchise practice approach based on almost three decades of writing, editing and reviewing hundreds of franchise operations manuals. The essence of this approach is also common sense – letting the true expert in your business write the manual. Typically that person is the founder of the business, or a small team of management personnel who know business operations inside and out. While a franchise expert should be involved in the process, the expert’s role should be limited to a planning and editing capacity.

Three Easy Steps For Drafting A Franchise Operations Manual
The drafting process begins with planning and developing the Table of Contents for the franchise operations manual. This includes making sure all the appropriate chapters and topics are included, and the inappropriate ones are not. Knowledge of franchise management best practices is essential here, and that’s why a franchise expert’s input and planning is so important. Because most franchise operations manuals are incorporated by reference in the franchise agreement (which is a franchise industry best practice)  the franchise contract is also  reviewed.  Some operations-specific information may be inadvertently included in the contract by the attorneys, which is not a good thing. This needs to be moved out or appropriately amended.

The second step is giving the person(s) within your company who have drafting responsibility samples of operations manual writing styles, guidelines and instructions. With these, they can begin drafting each chapter of the manual using their extensive operational knowledge of the day-to-day, week-to-week, etc. aspects of your business.

The third and final step is having the franchise expert review each chapter as it is drafted and comment on the professionalism and sufficiency of the chapters from a franchise industry best practices and franchise operator perspective.

Summary
The first couple chapters are typically the hardest to draft, as you or your management personnel learn and apply operations manual drafting techniques under the guidance of a professional editor. But after that, it’s smooth sailing through the balance of the document. This approach produces a professional, easy to use and update franchise operations manual. It also ensures the most efficient use of resources and talent, and eliminates having to pay a franchise consultant $20,000 or more for this relatively simple task. Whether or not a company ultimately franchises, the process of planning, documenting and implementing standardized operating procedures and systems via operations manuals, like blue chip franchise and non-franchised companies do, makes any firm operate more efficiently and competitively. In a franchise environment, it ensures consistent and uniform operations, helping personnel with different skills learn to perform tasks in a consistent manner throughout the franchise network. Finally, it’s important to realize the process of writing a franchise operations manual never stops. As the business model evolves, so must the operations manual – the ultimate reason why writing the manual yourself to begin with makes imminent common sense. As one franchise company executive observed “I found that not only was writing my own operations manual a cost savings; it was imperative.”

copyright 2008-2009, Kevin B. Murphy, B.S., M.B.A., J.D. – all rights reserved

For further information, visit the Franchise Foundations website

Kevin B. Murphy, Franchise Attorney, MBA – Mr. Franchise
http://www.articlesbase.com/ask-an-expert-articles/franchise-operations-manuals-how-to-write-a-franchise-operations-manual-in-three-easy-affordable-steps-701306.html

I grew up in Vienna, Austria and went to a School named "Vienna Business School".
This school helped me prepare for the business life alot .
The curriculum should be similar to this:
A. Compulsory Subjects Weekly Class Periods Kind of
Year Teaching
I. II. III. IV. V. Sum Contract
Core Subjects
1. Religious Instruction
2a. German
3. English incl. Business English
4. Foreign Language ²
5. History (History of Economy andSocial Science)
6. Geography (Economic Geography)
7. International Economic and Cultural Areas
8. Chemistry
9. Physics
10. Biology, Ecology and Merchandise Technology
11. Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
12. Business Administration
13. – 14. Practical Training in Business
Administration and Project
Management ³
13. Personality Development and Social Competence
14. Business Training, Project and Quality Management, Practice
Firm and Case Studies
15. Accounting and Controlling ³
16. Business Informatics
17. Information and Office Management
18. Political Education and Law
19. Political Economics
20. Physical Education
(This is the curriculum for the Vienna Buisiness school)

No not really. There are math and science specialty high schools. but to go to college in the US, they want a well rounded student who has had all core subject classes, no matter what their major is going to be in college.

These days employees expect to be developed as part of the deal. Human Resource folk mumble (and sometimes grumble) about something called the psychological contract. This is an unwritten, tacit contract that sits alongside the formal, written employment contract and is just as important. The employment contract sets out the basic consideration which will be along the lines of “if you do what we ask you to do, we’ll pay you X”. In reality things are of course more complex and the nature of the work required will be detailed in role profiles and the like, while the reward part will be similarly defined as salary, bonus, etc. and a range of non-financial rewards such as holidays. The psychological contract is each party’s understanding of what each other will do to play ‘fair’. For most of the 20th Century that ran along the lines of ‘turn up for work and do a reasonable job and we’ll employ you for life’ But this contract was torn up as part of the way working life was transformed from the 1980s to date. The ‘job for life’ has gone forever and it is probably impossible and certainly unwise to assume that we will have only one or two employers throughout our working life. The psychological contract these days runs along the lines of ‘in exchange for my efforts at work I expect to be developed and build my CV so that I increase my overall employment prospects’.

In the UK at the time of writing, there is still a scarcity of skills which means that employers are having to work harder to recruit and retain the best people; the so-called war for talent. This makes the job market a seller’s market with potential employees in a strong bargaining position. Recruitment firms even talk of the ‘reverse interview’ where candidates size up their chances of development before considering whether to accept any offer. To match this expectation with only the orthodox training and development offering of classroom training and external qualifications would be dreadfully expensive and ultimately unworkable. There will always be a time and a place for such things in an overall learning and development strategy of course, but coaching – particularly when delivered by managers – provides a more cost effective,tailor made and timely solution.

The change to the psychological contract is but one of numerous changes that have been played out in the theatre of work in recent years. The current industrial relations climate sees the pendulum swinging back towards the employee and their rights, with some employers bemoaning the bureaucracy and red-tape that this entails. Nevertheless it seems that family friendly policies like Flexible Working and Parental Leave are here to stay; driven at least in part by people’s desire to want a better work-life balance.

Other social changes have also had an impact on working life. Work now has a very different role in people’s lives. Where once work was simply the way we made enough money to pay the bills, we now work for a host of psychological as well as economic reasons. For example many people now fulfil their need for social interaction through work – I guess because of the amount of time we spend there! Others fulfil their esteem needs through work; enjoying the satisfaction that comes from doing a meaningful work and doing it well. It’s as if collectively we’ve all moved up a level or two on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In Western economies in general and in the UK in particular it is unlikely that anyone is going to fall on really hard times if they’re out of work – we have a welfare system that provides support, so a management style that invites people to be thankful they receive a salary is unlikely to prove very motivating. Instead we need to acknowledge that we need a more human approach; one that captures the variety of motivations for people to come to work. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a start but there is much work to do at the level of the fundamental relationship between the manager and their team.

Matt Somers
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/coaching-skills-training-making-the-case-for-coaching-part-one-688374.html