Dairy Queen Training Manual
(This interview was originally posted and is part of a podcast series available through )Chris Shanks, LMS Administrator for our client, sat down with John Leh, CEO and Lead Analyst of, to discuss the unique challenges of an organization with a large network of global franchisees. The ultimate goal being to increase training adoption of both franchise managers and crew members.Some key topics from the podcast include:. Top 3 Franchise Training Challenges for Dairy Queen. Types of Training Content (Compliance, product, etc.). Crew Member Onboarding and Training. Franchisee Training Preferences.
Attracting New Franchisees Through Training Practices. Gamification Strategies. Key LMS Features Used by DQ. Data Protection Regulation Awareness. Training Localization Strategy. Connecting ROI to Training.
Franchise vs. Off-the-Shelf Content. PARTING ADVICE!Here’s the audio recording and a transcription of the interview, which has been slightly edited for ease of reading. John Leh (JL): Welcome to the show podcast series with your host and independent tech analyst, John Leh. On this show, I interview the world’s leading experts in extended enterprise learning solutions from both the vendor and the practitioner perspective. Our guest today is Chris Shanks, LMS administrator at Dairy Queen, franchise or organization with over 6,000 franchisee locations worldwide in 18 countries representing well over a hundred thousand franchise employees.
Chris, welcome and thanks for joining us today.Chris Shanks (CS): Thanks for having me.JL: All right. We can’t wait to get through some good learning and experiences today on – maybe nightmares are strong words – but administrative challenges to–CS: Yeah challenges is a good word–JL: –to juggle all the complexity of managing a franchisee location and how you go about both logistically, practically, and from a business standpoint, providing training. I got a soft spot in my heart for Dairy Queen from growing up in rural Pennsylvania. That’s where we gathered on Friday and Saturday nights after the games.
We’d drive around the parking lot, cruising we called it, and that’s where all the cool kids were. So we told ourselves. We were probably more trouble.CS: Our brand is 78 years old. We love hearing stories. The brand is part of everybody’s childhood memories, mine as well, that’s part of what attracted me to this job.JL: Oh, that’s neat.
Well, Chris, tell us about yourself and your role at Dairy Queen. Cs f3020. That’s a perfect place to start.CS: My role really has been education almost my entire life.
I started as a eighth grade science teacher and did that for four years. Then I lived in Kansas City and worked for the North Kansas City School district on a program where we created an online learning system for people studying for their GED classes. So I did that for the next couple of years before I moved into the corporate world. Really focused on technology and training in that company in Kansas City for 12 years and just recently moved to Minneapolis to be a part of the Dairy Queen team.I was brought here really to work. We were in the middle of transitioning from one vendor to another vendor and so I was brought on to be the implementation manager/project manager for that roll out. We’ve rolled out and have been live for about a year and a half now.
So now my job really is all about engagement of the LMS, getting them to adapt and evolve the learning management system to really engage our crew and engage our managers in the process. So that’s what we’ve been working on for the last year./vccolumntextvccolumntext elid=”top-challenges” Top 3 Franchise Training Challenges for Dairy QueenJL: Wow. Great experience.
I know from experience, the roll out of an international learning system is no child’s play, that’s a lot of moving balls in the air with 6,000 independent franchise locations in all these different countries. You know, what are the top two or three challenges that you encounter every day in trying to manage the complexity of that?CS: So, Dairy Queen may be unique – I have several – but Dairy Queen may be unique in the fact that the stores are not all the same; they don’t always all have the same menu. So if you’ve visited a Dairy Queen, you know there are some stores that only have treats only and they’re only open for certain months of the year, usually in the summer months. You have our Grill and Chill, which have full menu items. You might have a mall location that’s really Orange Julius and treat with some hot dogs.
So there’s a lot of variety to our menu. Our learning management system has to accommodate all of those different menu types and all that training. We’ve got to train all the crew and all the staff in other countries as well. The Canada menu is a little different than the United States menu.
We have stores in Mexico and the Caribbean. We have stores in China, which we haven’t rolled out yet, but that’s definitely on our roadmap. So there’s definitely some complexity to our system that makes our learning management system complex as well. Types of Training ContentJL: And so, when you’re rolling that content out, is there a certain type of content that you start with that’s the most important? I guess you rolled that LMS out, when you looked at all the content you could roll out, was it about compliance?
Was it starting a business? What type of content was the most important to get out there?CS: There’s really, I would say, two. We definitely have a compliance aspect of it because we have manager certification requirements that our managers must meet legally in order for a store to be maintained. So that’s a piece of it- that manager certification process. And then being able to go on and study and take the exams and the skills assessments online so that their completion trickled down into our legal department. That’s definitely something that we needed to set up right away.The other is crew training. With any restaurant industry or QSR industry, there’s always turnover.
Dairy Queen Training Manual Free
You have new crew members starting daily, especially for us. Our hiring season will start here soon because we’re getting ready for the summer, which is our peak time. So it’s important to be able to get somebody in there and having really quick access for a 15- or 16-year-old crew member to get started. They need easy access to our learning content, food safety and our orientation lessons, but then be able to start to work in their work area. We need to provide something very easy for them where they don’t have to take a lot of time to get to know the system.
It needs to be pretty self-explanatory so they can just get started and be on the floor pretty quickly. Crew Member Onboarding and TrainingJL: Well, you know, I’ve heard from other franchises that there’s always a delay from hiring to getting somebody into a system and getting them started right away. Do you have that same challenge with people starting every day or is it just instant day one they already have access to the training that they need?CS: Well, the franchisees really are responsible for setting up people in our system. We have our homemade user management system that kind of gives them access to our intranet and other sites that we manage. And then we have an automatic system. As soon as workers are added to that System Chore Intranet, they are automatically pushed into our LMS, so it’s within 15 to 20 minutes that they have a registration they can use to log into our LMS. So it’s pretty quick for them to do that.
Joint Employer & Franchisee Training PreferencesJL: Excellent. And what does it mean by joint employer? What does that term mean with franchises and does that impact you in your daily life?CS: It absolutely impacts us and that’s definitely one of the challenges that we have. Joint employer rules maintain that the franchisee has to be responsible for HR functions, and there needs to be a very clear line between the franchisee and the franchisor. So we, in essence, cannot dictate HR functions. We can provide recommendations, we can provide best practices, but the franchisee needs to be responsible.The crew members and their staff need to understand and recognize that they are employed by the franchisee, not by International Dairy Queen.
Dairy Queen Training Manual Online
It’s an important line that needs to be drawn, which presents a challenge to us because we can provide training, but we can’t dictate that the franchisees must use this training. It’s not a mandatory program. We have to make it enticing enough for them to want to use it, but we can’t dictate it.That’s definitely something that we have to work through. Any time we make updates to the system, anytime we’re trying to figure out the process and the best program that we can present to our franchisees, we have to keep joint employer in mind to make sure that line is very clear.JL: And when you say you draw that line, I understand legally, but to communicate thatwhat’s that text like? You just constantly try to reinforce that in any of your materials? Is that how you accomplish that orCL: Yeah, we try and reinforce that, especially in our recruiting. We’re actually just getting ready to roll out a system-wide recruiting site and even on that, it’s very clear for the crew members when they first applied for the job to say you are applying for this specific franchisee, not for International Dairy Queen.
Training, anything that we provide to our franchisees, is available for them, but we cannot mandate it. The only thing that we can mandate is that we have a certain number of managers that need to be certified per location. How they get certified or how they study for their certification is completely up to the franchisee. Ranked as the (2017) by The Craig Weiss Group (formerly E-Learning 24/7) and the (2016) by Talented Learning, eLogic produces meaningful results for its client partners.
Founded in 2001, eLogic Learning is an industry leading provider of Learning Management Systems, custom content development and learning strategy solutions. Our cloud-based learning management technology, content capabilities and accompanying subject matter expertise provide every partner with a tailored approach to success. Our motto: 'The LMS you want, the partner you deserve'.