Ryan Englin on Franchise Focus with Lisa Linkowsky: Why Franchise Owners Keep Losing Good People and How to Fix It

I went on Franchise Focus with Lisa Linkowsky to talk about why franchise owners in the trades struggle to hire and keep good people, and what they can do about it right now.

This conversation hit close to home. I grew up in a blue-collar family. My dad worked 12-hour days, six days a week in manufacturing. He'd drag me to the plant on weekends as free labor. It wasn't until I was older that I realized the reason he worked so much was because he never learned how to hire and build a team. His employees loved him, but he always struggled to find good people. That experience is the reason I built Core Matters.

After college I went corporate, developed an appreciation for process and systems, then started a digital marketing agency serving home service contractors. Every single one of them would call me and say the same thing: "We can't take any more leads because we can't fill our trucks." That's when it clicked. Recruiting is a marketing activity. If we don't approach it that way, we will always struggle to attract great people.

Lisa asked me what the biggest mistakes are that franchise owners make when it comes to labor. I gave her two.

First, most franchise owners don't have a hiring problem. They have a retention problem. Some of that retention problem comes from the fact that when a tech shows up for an interview, they hire them on the spot because they're so happy someone actually showed up. But the real issue is deeper. These are people with hopes, goals, and dreams. They want things out of their job and out of their life. If you never bother to learn what those things are, don't be surprised when they leave.

Second, they don't treat a new applicant like a customer lead. I hear it all the time from service contractors. When the phone rings, they book the appointment. When a customer emails, they respond in 10 minutes. But when someone applies for a job? They let that application sit in the inbox for six or seven days. Then they wonder why candidates ghost them. Treat your applicants the way you treat your best customer leads. That one change alone can shift everything.

Lisa brought up a franchise owner who said his secret to keeping 60 people was simple: he treated them like he cared about them. And then she mentioned hearing other owners say, "I'm not going to treat them well because they're just going to leave me anyway." That one makes my blood boil. Did they leave because you didn't treat them well, or did they leave because that's just what people do? Here's the question I always ask: Do you care that Susie is going through a divorce? Do you care that Jimmy's kid is having problems at school? Do you care that Alice just got a health diagnosis that might be terminal? Because if you don't care about the things going on in their world, they are never going to care about your business the way you want them to.

We also talked about why I work with franchise owners specifically. In the franchise world, corporate's hands are often tied because of joint employment rules. Some franchises disregard it. Some are so conservative they won't touch anything related to pay, benefits, or hiring decisions. That leaves franchise owners driving blind. Many of them have decades of business experience but spent their careers at larger organizations where HR handled all of this. Now they're on their own with no process and no training, making decisions that aren't always great because they don't know what they don't know.

The Core Fit Hiring System covers the full employee life cycle. Everything from what you do to attract people to apply, to how you make a quality hiring decision, to how you onboard them, engage them over the long term, and assess both the people and the process. Anything that has to do with the employee experience that is not compliance related. I stay out of the legal space. I know enough about compliance to know where the gray areas are, and I love to play there.

I also made something clear about terminations: no one should ever be surprised that they got terminated. They need to know it's coming because you've been coaching them, mentoring them, and having real conversations. Especially in small business, I see owners who assume the person knows they're a poor performer. Then they fire them and the employee is completely caught off guard. That's not fair. That person has to go home and tell their spouse and kids. Fix the communication before it gets to that point.

Lisa asked about the labor market outlook. Here's what I see. The Great Resignation turned into the Great Regret. Over half the people who switched jobs wish they had their old jobs back. The grass was not greener. Employers started making promises they knew they couldn't keep. Now people are sitting still. They'd rather play with the devil they know. For the trades, I don't think this recession will hit as hard from a labor perspective because the shortage is so deep. But that makes retention even more critical. People will still leave. If you don't focus on keeping the people you have, you will keep bleeding.

The trades have conditioned an entire generation to believe they don't care about people. Treat workers like a disposable part. Something breaks, you don't fix it, you replace it. Until the industry decides to change that, there will always be a shortage. The companies that stand out are the ones that take a different approach. They care about their people. And they stick out like a sore thumb in the best possible way.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on building the employee experience and the full hiring system on Titans of the Trades.