Molly Maid UK Limited is the licence holder for the international franchise within the UK and is the number one domestic cleaning franchise in the UK, ranking 9th in the Elite Franchise Top 100 Rankings. 2023 was their record year with an annual turnover of £22million from over 250,000 cleans, which proves that the demand for their services has recently boomed. 2024 marks Molly Maid’s 40th Anniversary in the UK.

Challenges

• The existing intranet was clunky, uninspiring and very limiting as it was only accessible on desktop

• Communications were mostly one-way and in the form of emails stored as PDFs on the intranet, becoming a long list of documents with a limited search feature

• Limited interaction between franchise owners and reduced opportunities for them to exchange best practices, solve challenges and grow their businesses.

Molly Maid wanted to improve the ability to quickly communicate and better support their franchisees. The organisation aspired to create an easily accessible, web-based, one-stop “on-line home” in an intuitive environment.

Solutions

An Intuitive Solution

Molly Maid naturally moved to Workplace from Meta as it offered a far superior solution compared to their intranet, with a familiar environment for most franchisees and other employees already using Facebook. As a web-based solution, Workplace has enabled Molly Maid to offer more proactive and timely support to franchisees, bringing organisation and franchisees closer together. According to the Workplace system administrators at Molly Maid, Workplace is a superb platform that fosters interaction and collaboration by offering endless creative options such as posts, videos, meetings and document storage.

The Set Up

Prior to launch, Molly Maid set up their Workplace instance to become the one-stop platform for franchisees. All company policies, procedures and guides were imported into the Knowledge Library and the Chat function was designated for one-to-one communication to replace WhatsApp and SMS. Pre-defined and easily identifiable groups were created on Workplace and included “Weekly Updates” for business growth support and initiatives, “Franchise Support” for operational questions from franchisees, and “Molly Maid Together” for franchisees to share anything and everything on their minds.

The Roll Out

Molly Maid set up a dummy account on Workplace and published examples of posts and interactions, to showcase how the platform should be used. They then recorded a short video to guide franchisees on what to do after receiving the email invitation and to give them a look and feel of navigating around the system.

On launch day, an SMS and email were sent out to remind everyone to be on the look-out for the Workplace invitation email. Within minutes, franchisees were claiming their accounts and posting on the platform.

Once launched, Champions were asked to lead the way with posts, comments and reactions, helping others who were less familiar with Facebook understand how Workplace should be used.

Molly Maid attribute their high adoption rates to their thorough preparation and guidance prior to launch, which made Workplace easy to understand and enabled everyone to quickly get on board.

To maintain high engagement, Molly Maid’s Workplace system administrators regularly share short videos to remind users about useful Workplace features such as how to search for content and how to manage notifications.

Exceptional Adoption and Engagement in 2023

In January 2024, the Cocentric Digital Consulting Team ran a Workplace Health Check for Molly Maid that analysed the performance of their Workplace instance during 2023. Molly Maid were very pleased to see that their adoption and engagement levels on the platform were exceptional, surpassing all benchmarked averages. The Health Check is a starting point for Molly Maid to continue building out their Workplace “online home” and successfully cater to their franchisees.

“Having Workplace has transformed our communication strategy and together with 8 in-person group meetings, our communication and support structure are now more personalised on a whole new level. We’re very proud of what we have achieved.”

Jonathan Holden, COO

Results

Awards

Molly Maid received its fifth five star Franchisee Satisfaction Award via an independent and anonymous survey, and last year went one step further by winning the 2023 Best Franchise Award in the Management Category. This has confirmed that their support is getting stronger, and Workplace is a big part of that.

Giving Franchisees Support and a Voice

Anonymous satisfaction surveys that Molly Maid carry out annually captured specific comments about how much franchisees enjoy Workplace. This has helped Molly Maid gain increasing ratings on the level of support they offer to help franchisees grow their business.

“Molly Maid keep in close and regular daily contact with all franchisees through Workplace and three meetings per year. We all have access to the Owner and CEO and have our assigned Business Advisor. We are kept well informed of the Market, new initiatives for our business.”

Molly Maid Franchisee

Workplace has also given franchisees the opportunity to share things they are particularly proud of. “Shining Moments” is a Workplace group where franchise owners share heart-warming experiences of their staff going above and beyond to delight their customers.