Why people leave coworking, franchise and Multi-Location businesses

A coworking operator runs six centres across a city. At five of them, community managers stay two years or more. At the sixth, three have left in a year. The brand is the same. The rent is similar. The pay bands match. The sixth centre has one thing the others lack: a centre head who changes the roster on Friday evening for the following week.

This is the shape of attrition in a business that runs from many small sites. It is true of coworking and serviced office chains, restaurant and salon franchises, retail stores, education centres and clinic networks. Head office looks at the total and sees an average. The people who leave experience a branch. This article lists the usual reasons for leaving, shows how to read them from your own data, and describes a simple way to hear the truth.

• Roster chaos. Shifts change late. Weekly offs move. A person who lives forty minutes from the site cannot plan a doctor's visit or a child's pickup.
• One-person desks. The front desk, the cash counter, the chair in the salon, the reception of a serviced floor often have a single person on duty. No breaks, no cover, no one to share a difficult member or customer.
• Unequal rules. One branch gives a compensatory off after a late close. Another does not. People talk. The branch with the stricter manager loses staff.
• A dead end. A good front desk executive in a small centre has no larger site to move to, or no one tells her that there is one.
• Transfers by notice board. A person is moved to another site with two days of warning, a longer commute and no explanation.
• Brand promise, local reality. Head office promises training, uniforms or incentives. The branch manager has not heard of them.

A company with twelve outlets and a third of its people leaving each year may have eight outlets with almost none and four with half the team gone. The number to look at is the spread. In a franchise network, the spread is wider because each outlet is owned by someone different, and the franchisor sees only the sales figures. A useful first step is to list every site, its headcount at the start of the year, the number who left, and the manager's tenure. Patterns appear in minutes.

BRANCH / TYPE: coworking centre / serviced floor / outlet / salon / store / school centre / clinic.
HEADCOUNT AT START OF PERIOD: ____.
JOINERS / LEAVERS: ____.
LEAVERS WITHIN 90 DAYS OF JOINING: ____.
BRANCH MANAGER AND DATE APPOINTED: ____.
ROSTER CHANGES MADE WITH LESS THAN 48 HOURS NOTICE (count): ____.
AVERAGE CLOSING TIME VERSUS PLANNED CLOSING TIME: ____.
MAIN REASON HEARD IN EXIT TALKS: ____.
TRANSFERS IN AND OUT: ____.

1. 1

   Hold the exit talk centrally

   Someone from head office or an outside adviser asks. Branch managers are poor listeners when the complaint is about them.

2. 2

   Ask about the week, not the job

   What did a normal week look like? When did you last get a full weekend? Who covered your lunch?

3. 3

   Ask about the move

   Was there another branch or role you would have liked? Did anyone tell you it existed?

4. 4

   Record the site

   Note the branch on the sheet. The site tells you more than the person.

5. 5

   Read the sheets by site

   After each quarter, rank branches by exits. Visit the worst two. Learn from the best two.

• Coworking and serviced office staff talk about members who call at ten at night, access card failures, the Wi-Fi blamed on the front desk, and a centre head who is never at the centre.
• Restaurant and food outlet crews talk about split shifts, a Sunday roster that appears on Saturday, breakage deducted from pay, and a cook asked to run the cash counter.
• Salon and spa staff talk about commission rules that change, product sales targets, appointment gaps with no pay support and customers who follow a stylist to a new place.
• Retail store staff talk about festival-week closing times, stock-take nights, shrinkage blamed on the floor and a till shortage taken from pay.
• Education centre and clinic staff talk about admission targets, parent calls late in the evening, and no clear step from counsellor to centre head.

These complaints sound different, yet they sit in three places: roster, rule and route. The roster decides how the week feels. The rule decides whether it feels fair. The route decides whether there is a reason to stay for a second year.

Publish rosters on a fixed day. Write down what a branch manager can approve alone and what needs head office. Tell staff about openings at other branches before advertising outside. Put a transfer note on paper, with the reason, the date and what changes. A role design exercise for community managers and front desk staff creates clear steps for growth. The attendance and shift routine for coworking centres shows how to fix rosters and cover.

For retention work in general, see how GullyHR approaches employee retention and attrition management. The overview for multi-location businesses puts the other patterns beside this one.

• Fill the site exit sheet for each branch from last year's records.
• Visit the site with the most leavers and watch one opening and one closing.
• Fix the day on which rosters are published, in every branch.