Hourly employees are the backbone of the U.S. economy. They make up well over half (58 percent) of all wage and salary workers. At the same time, they are also often young. For example, 69 percent of hourly food service workers are under the age of 25.

Their job with you could likely be the first one they’ve ever had. They have a lot to learn, and you have a vision and strategy for how the business should run. Translating that to reality, though, can be a challenge in a multi-location business setting with disconnected locations, people, and systems creating barriers to work efficiently and effectively.

This often creates a performance gap between what corporate management needs to happen and what the individual locations are delivering.  The result is you spending too much time in the weeds rather than on whatever matters most to you.

So, how do you help those young, hourly employees (and their managers) do the right things at the right time at scale?

Bring Technology into the Picture

With an Operational Intelligence (OI) platform like TruOI, you can integrate and automate all your systems, data, locations, and people in real-time. With everything tied together, what you want to happen with your business happens the right way, at the right time – and at scale across all your locations.

Here are eight examples where TruOI can put day-to-day operational activities on autopilot, giving you time back to focus on the big picture, your next step, or the things that matter most in your personal life.

1. Employee Training

Well-trained workers are essential to making the business run day-today and delivering a positive customer experience. Yet, research shows that 70 percent of restaurant employees feel they don’t receive enough hands-on training from managers, with 62 percent saying that a lack of training was the main reason for leaving their job.

TruOI makes sure there’s never a gap in training by getting employees up-to-speed easier and faster. With a connection to your training system, employees receive automated training and instruction checklists with links to your materials, while management coaching is sent to managers. That’s all while TruOI tracks completion and training progress across all your different business locations down to the employee level.

 2. Timecard Clock-outs

Young people are at a different place in life. At work, they may be focused on the task at hand. But once it’s time to leave, they’re likely out the door and on to the next thing – without clocking out. Of course, that’s not ideal for you when it leads to cost overruns.

With TruOI, you can attack the problem from all angles. Our platform not only detects a timecard violation in real-time, but it also automatically alerts the specific employee to clock out. Plus, it notifies the location manager about the labor variance and sends information from your knowledge base on how to minimize issues in the future.

3. Sanitation & Temperature Checks

What are two crucial components of day-to-day operations at multi-location businesses? To be honest, there are many, but sanitation and food safety rank highly. Making sure your physical locations are well maintained, food is safe, and inventory is protected with temperature checks is easy if employees adhere to safety regulations. If not, you may be facing fines, litigation, inventory loss, and more.

The good news is you can feel secure knowing employees are following guidelines with TruOI. The platform connects all franchisees and team members to one integrated documentation platform that can be used for things like hygiene check-ups and checklists with links to training sent straight to employees. Plus, TruOI can detect when a data point or relationship passes outside set limits to generate an alert and provide instruction to get back on track – all automatically and in real time.

You’ll never have to worry that your 10, 50, or 500 locations are staying well-maintained or that your walk-in temps are ok. You’ll know TruOI and employees are staying on top of it – and you can always double-check with real-time reporting.

4. Equipment Maintenance

Managing equipment maintenance is a necessary evil but also headache-inducing. Of course, for your business to run smoothly, your equipment must stay well maintained. It’s time to put ease into this aspect of operations.

TruOI puts equipment maintenance on autopilot. Automated business task triggers and performance alerts notify unit managers and staff to scheduled equipment maintenance – instructions included. Now, you never have to worry about unplanned costs due to missed maintenance.

5. Opening & Closing Checklists

Every business, whether it’s retail or restaurant, starts and ends the day with tasks to get setup or close shop. Typically, that takes the form of a checklist for employees to follow.

With TruOI, you can make it easy to get that work done. The platform streamlines day-to-day operating activities with automated activity triggers and alerts based on a schedule or real-time performance metrics. Plus, it can send that checklist directly to an employee’s phone, so they don’t have to keep referencing a physical checklist at a workstation.

6. “Best Practice” Tips & Alerts

Half of the challenge of running multi-location businesses is managing staff and pushing towards peak performance.

Our platform connects franchisors’ training and management systems to an individual franchisee’s performance and generates automated, performance-driven training, best practices, and coaching. Whether it’s a quick text or video, TruOI helps you gain impressive efficiency and performance.

7. Sales Promotions

Another way to drive greater performance across locations is by incentivizing staff through sales and promotion competitions.

With TruOI, you can drive in-store promotions with real-time performance-to-goal digital scorecards on back-of-house wall displays at each location. Reminders and instructions are sent via video and text, and everyone from owners to team members gets an automatic, real-time view of the competition.

8. Customer Experience

Happy customers equal greater profitability in the long run. But when wait times or order delivery are too long, that means less satisfied customers.

Avoid that by using the power of real-time analytics and real-time business alert automation. The TruOI platform sends automated performance or activity alerts directly to the corporate office as well as to employees and managers on their mobile devices. That way, they’re more aware of any operational problems and can take the right steps to fix them.

Put your Franchise or Chain Business on Autopilot and Bridge the Performance Gap

Improving the ROI of your labor investment cannot happen solely by human instruction. The performance gap will only widen, especially with turnover so steep. You need technology to close the gap and help empower those young employees – or staff of any age – to do their job at the highest level.

TruOI is a franchise and chain business tool for managing the performance gap. It’s a first-of-its-kind solution and is backed by the experience gained from years of working with multi-location business owners to solve their operational challenges and be more successful.

Learn more about closing the performance gap in multi-location operations with TruOI. Request a demo today!