A common thread for all groups who attend Two Men and a Truck’s Multi-Unit Manager (MUM) program is to create better managers, in turn creating better environments for employees. In doing this, the goal for MUM is to increase manager retention and keep attendee turnover below the national benchmark.
MUM is designed specifically for managers of multi-unit franchises—a business group with three or more operating franchises. The managers participating typically range from sales managers to the franchisees themselves. The MUM program aims to address the unique challenges these groups often face due to their size and distance in operations. Typical challenges include communications, compliance, consistency, and scaling.
Program Details
Administered virtually, the Multi-Unit Manager program is part of Two Men and a Truck’s Career Development Program. Similar to a university, a capped number of qualifying groups enroll in the program each fall, choosing from a college-type catalog of courses. Areas of study can include business basics such as finance, marketing, and recruiting, but everything is tailored to the multi-unit experience. There are also advanced options available for those units looking to grow their team to the next level. These include topics such as culture and difficult conversations, growth mindsets, and ancillary services.
As courses are chosen for the season, the multi-unit group embarks on a six- to-13-week journey through the MUM season dependent on their chosen workload. Each topic works on the same mechanics:
- An overview of learning consisting of best practices and brand standards that is applicable for all franchises across the entire world
- Homework and material the unit will use to gain hands-on experience on how the learning can be applied to their own franchises
- One-on-one sessions in which subject matter experts (SMEs) sit down with the unit and complete a deep dive together to figure out how to best align the learning to the unit for long-term success
Survey assessments are administered to test participant knowledge, as well as receive feedback on the program. A second survey is sent to a group contact to gauge changes in the group, measure effectiveness, and follow up on goal achievement.
Using a Six Sigma approach, MUM evaluates the use and feedback on each offered course, and then makes decisions on course offerings in following seasons based on outputs.
For ongoing reinforcement, franchises meet with their franchise business consultants and other centralized consulting team members to monitor business and growth. These meetings also serve as a time to speak to training lessons from MUM and how they can be applied to franchise-specific situations as they become real-world hurdles.
Results
The 2023/2024 Multi-Unit Manager program concluded in spring 2024. One hundred percent of MUM attendees (all managers) had remained with their franchises through August 1, 2024. Locations that participated in MUM saw an average of 0.9 percent revenue growth in a year-over-year comparison, an impressive result as the housing market reported a decrease of 5.4 percent in home sales as of June 2024, which significantly impacted the moving industry.
