Supermac’s – Making training more than a manual

Supermac’s is Ireland’s largest and fastest-growing domestic fast-food restaurant group. The company operates the Supermac’s brand as well as SuperSubs (a fast food chain that specializes in subs, wraps, and salads). Supermac’s also holds the exclusive rights for the Papa John’s Pizza brand in Ireland.

Supermac’s yearly turnover now exceeds $150 million. Employees clock in at over 2,700 and there are more than 100 stores across Ireland.

The training challenge

As Supermac’s continues to grow, our training needed to change. In the past, we would give our employees an operations manual and asked them to take it home to study. The size of the manual and the information inside it created a daunting task. Online training, on the other hand, would make new hires’ first few weeks more manageable. It would also be an excellent way for our older employees, who have been with us for years, to refresh their knowledge.

The challenge was to supplement our hands-on training with more than a manual. We needed online training. And we needed it for three primary reasons:

• Better tracking: There are many legal requirements in the food industry. Our employees must follow rules about manual handling and take part in safety courses. We wanted a better way to track who had completed training and when. So, if an issue ever arises, we’ll be able to pull up those records without any problems.
  
• Consistency: Our area managers often find that different stores work in different ways. We want everyone, whether they’re working in a company store or a franchise store, to be consistent. Every Supermac’s should offer the same quality and service.
  Offering the same quality and service across stores requires consistent training. It was critical for us to deliver the same training to everyone.
  
• Free up other departments: With over one hundred stores, it’s likely that machines will break down and tills will act up. When that happens, stores call either the IT or Maintenance team. With training, we want to free up these specialized teams so they have time to deal with more significant problems. We want to train our store employees to troubleshoot and solve small technical or mechanical issues on their own.

Why you chose eFront

As the sole instructional designer at Supermac’s, I was looking for an LMS I could rely on. My time is better spent creating and launching courses. So, my first requirement was knowing that an LMS was working in the background while I focused on the nuts and bolts part of my job.

And eFront delivered.

I noticed it would substantially decrease the amount of manual work I had to do. Its automatic notification engine makes it easy to customize the type of notifications and reminders I need to send.

Another reason I chose eFront was the simple way I could deliver the same course to different stores. For confidentiality reasons, we want to keep test scores and other data separate from store to store. With eFront’s “branches” features, I could do this with the least amount of effort.

The Results

Our first goal is to increase our level of training in all our stores and get store managers on board with our plans. Managers are an integral part of training as they have direct contact with employees.

At the moment, we have several stores using eFront.

We’re planning on rolling out our online training to all our stores, but we’re taking a slow and steady approach. We want to make sure that every store and every person in the store is comfortable using the software before we introduce it to the next.

“I invested a lot of time with eFront at the start, and now I have a site that works really really well for what I need it for.”

Leanne O’Driscoll

Instructional Designer