Business View - January 2015 63
address protests, understand upcoming regulatory
changes and to effectively express their concerns re-
garding policy to lawmakers.
Regardless of whether you support the Affordable
Healthcare Act or not, franchise owners who are sub-
ject to the employer mandate and are not compliant
will be penalized in 2015. In an ideal case scenario,
the Affordable Healthcare Act will reduce the cost of
providing health insurance to employees. Employers
who do not engage in actions that result in their not
having to pay for health insurance coverage may actu-
ally benefit from improved employee retention and rev-
enue. Happy and healthy employees tend to miss work
less and be more productive. Some franchisors are
getting ahead of the game by taking steps to help their
franchisees understand their health plan options.
“We set up our own exchange for affordable health-
care,” said Shacka. “After countless hours of research
we narrowed down the overwhelming number of avail-
able options to ones that best meet the needs of our
franchisees.” All of Two Men and A Truck’s franchisees
are currently compliant.
9. Change is constant. Franchisors
and franchisees must adapt or die!
Competition is increasing in many sectors. There are
regulatory changes brewing. Customer tastes are
changing. In order to contend with these challenges,
franchisors and franchisees must work hard and to-
gether in order to improve efficiency and differentiate
themselves from competitors. Doing things the “old
way” no longer works.
10. The good franchising opportunities
are only getting better.
Franchises that are open to exploring and adopting
properly tested new ideas and adapt their systems to
take advantage of them will continue to thrive. This
need for open-mindedness also applies to franchisees
who need to support changes their brand makes with
the understanding that the stronger their brand be-
comes, the better they’ll do.
FRANCHISE
