Master franchise operators hold rights to a brand for a region or country and sell units to sub-franchisees. This is how to build the central team, train partners and keep brand standards without being their employer.
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Share your requirementsA master franchise operator buys the right to develop a brand in a defined territory and then recruits sub-franchisees to open units. The central team may include franchise sales executives who find and qualify partners, a legal and documentation clerk, a training head, field support managers who visit units, a supply or procurement team, a marketing lead and an accounts staff who collect fees. Unit staff belong to sub-franchisees, but customers judge the whole brand. The operator answers to the global or national owner on standards, fees and openings, and to partners on support. Targets for new units press sales staff to oversell, and weak partners then strain support staff. Good field people are scarce, travel widely and take calls at odd hours. For the wider sector, read HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in master franchise operators. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Executives chase openings and sign people who lack money, time or interest, and support teams carry the cost.
One field manager looks after many outlets and can only fire-fight, not coach.
A strong partner is forgiven lapses while a weak one is penalised, and word spreads.
Partners and unit staff learn well in the opening week, then slide back to their own habits.
Staff at the outlet answer to the partner, yet customers blame the brand.
Everyone wants a visit, a promotion and a fix, and the support team has no way to rank requests.
Accounts staff chase late fees, and the same partner then asks field managers for help.
New regions open before local support staff are trained, and early failures hurt the brand.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Learning and Development; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a master franchise operators business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Money, time, background and fit, scored by two people before an agreement is signed.
Money, time, background and fit, scored by two people before an agreement is signed. Hold the notes in documentation.
Decide how many units each manager can support well, and review it as the network grows.
Decide how many units each manager can support well, and review it as the network grows. See compensation benchmarking for field pay.
Scheduled visits with a shared checklist, scored the same way for every partner, followed by coaching, not only penalties.
Scheduled visits with a shared checklist, scored the same way for every partner, followed by coaching, not only penalties. Use performance management.
Launch week, month three refresher, yearly update and a certified trainer at each unit.
Launch week, month three refresher, yearly update and a certified trainer at each unit. See learning and development.
A one-page list of what the brand expects from partners on staff treatment, uniforms and customer handling.
A one-page list of what the brand expects from partners on staff treatment, uniforms and customer handling. Use HR policy packages.
Recruit and train local support staff before the first unit opens.
Recruit and train local support staff before the first unit opens. Use the recruitment process.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Hiring field managers before new regions open.
Certified training for partners and their staff.
Audit scoring and coaching that treat partners alike.
A staff charter that partners can adopt.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
It depends on distance, unit maturity and the support needed. Start with a small number, watch workload and adjust.
Add selection criteria, share the cost of failures with sales and reward units that survive, not only signings.
Yes, as a service to partners. The staff remain the partner's employees, so keep lines of authority clear and confirm the legal position with a qualified professional.
Use the same checklist, score it the same way and apply the same consequence. Share results with partners so they can improve.
Give a growth path, fair pay for travel, manageable unit counts and recognition for network health, not only openings.
We would map your central team, field coverage and one partner journey, then set up role sheets, an audit rhythm and a training ladder. We do not do legal advice or payroll filings, and scope is written down after we talk.
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