The ability of franchises in the ecuational services sector to adapt to the challenges presented by COVID-19 has been a great success story duing these turbulent times

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, franchise systems across all sectors had to quickly pivot their operations to adapt to the changing times. In the early stages of the pandemic, educational franchises offering supplemental education services quickly responded to continue offering their services in the form of online learning. As restrictions shutting down physical locations were lifted across Canada, educational franchises were again quick to adapt to welcome students back into classrooms with plexi-glass dividers, strict sensitization, mandatory mask-wearing, and other measures to ensure the safety of staff and students. The educational franchise sector’s response to COVID-19 has been a great success story of resilience during these turbulent times.

Here, The Franchise Voice caught up with CFA members in the educational services sector to gain insight into how they were able to successfully pivot their operations in response to COVID-19.  

Beyond the Classroom

Beyond the Classroom has been providing in-home tutoring since 1998 that is customized for the student’s individual needs. On March 16^th, in response to COVID-19, an immediate notification went out to all families and tutors across all franchise locations within the same few hours indicating that in-home tutoring was to cease immediately. It was a corporate decision to ensure we were acting in good faith and doing our best to protect the tutors and families we work with.

One year prior, February 2019, three out of four Wednesdays there was an ice storm. Why is this significant now? Since tutors were unable to travel to the student’s homes on those dates in February, we began to investigate the possibility of providing online tutoring services as a back up during inclement weather or illness.

When the pandemic hit and businesses were forced to end services, Beyond the Classroom was able to immediately convert 30 per cent of families across the organization to online tutoring in a seamless manner. We had tested the online tutoring platform for almost a year prior and knew it met our core values at Beyond the Classroom (allowed that connection with the tutor, was flexible for families, and embraced the whole child).

Today, we now have two streams of service delivery, online and in-home (with health guidelines) and families are embracing the choice.

Some key things that helped us to pivot were:

• Strong leadership from the franchisor
• An optimistic and positive attitude from all franchisees
• Clear communication and messaging across the organization, to families and tutors
• An established online tutoring platform that we knew we could trust
• Regular online meetings with all franchisees, along with weekly email updates

An unexpected opportunity also came in March when the local TV network in Halton (Cogeco/YourTV) approached the founder/franchisor to create a new TV series for families to help navigate learning at home during the pandemic. This was such a great success and a way to promote our business that Beyond the Classroom (tv show) is currently filming the second season and has expanded across more community networks.

The ability to help families in an alternative way has brought the organization together to become even stronger. We look forward to continuing to provide continual employment options to tutors and help families with this ever-changing education landscape.

–  Cathy Thompson, Founder & Franchisor Beyond the Classroom

UCMAS Canada

The human race is being challenged like never before in this century. People have been confined to their homes, our lifestyles have taken a jolt, and businesses across all sectors have been turned upside down. These “unprecedented times” have landed us in unchartered territory. But as they say, “Tough times never last, tough people do.” That’s the story of UCMAS Canada’s resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rollback time by 6-7 months and you will see UCMAS classes buzzing with children. Many practicing with Abacus (our mental math program), some becoming professionals in performing mental math calculations, and all of them having a great time learning mathematics. Today, you will see a completely new e-learning environment. But was this switch so easy for UCMAS Canada?

Before deciding to offer online classes in mid-March 2020, Anand Karia, President – UCMAS Canada & USA, had an e-huddle with franchisees and course instructors. The message from the President was loud and clear: “The learning medium might change, but the learning effectiveness and delivery should be intact.” And that echoed like a sermon among all. The energy batteries got charged and everyone was raring to give online learning a try. UCMAS Canada specifically focused on developing new e-learning materials, presentations, and the seamless scheduling of classes while investing in digital infrastructure, and conducting more than 30 webinars for UCMAS parents.

Saswati Biswas, an ace Abacus Instructor with more than 20 years of experience, had to realign her training styles. Shifting to an online medium was not easy. During the initial days of implementing the new online program, she had to learn the operational intricacies of online classes such as using the mute button, addressing students through multiple screens, using waiting rooms, and conducting online tests. In her early 50s, Saswati had an uphill technical challenge, but her resilience to adapt and live up to the President’s word set an example for everyone at UCMAS Canada. Today, she flawlessly handles online classes and even volunteers to conduct family Zoom calls.

Just like Saswati, every Course Instructor at UCMAS readjusted to deliver online classes. They have been instrumental in keeping UCMAS going and helped in reaching more than 10,000 students.  “It has been true that if you stand by your people, they will stand by you during any crisis,” says Karia. “To my fellow franchisors, one can always invest in technology and e-infrastructure, but your biggest investment will be towards earning the goodwill of your team members, and that will determine your success.”

– UCMAS Canada

Under the GUI Acdemy

As coding and computer science skills have begun to emerge as a new literacy for the 21st century, more and more families are looking towards the private sector to deliver these skills. Across the industry, there are a handful of options of programs available to teach kids how to code. 

At Under the GUI Academy, our point of differentiation has always been small class sizes of in-person learning. Being able to deliver immediate feedback from a live instructor is a completely different experience than a pre-scripted online program. It is our bread and butter and what has kept us in business for the last seven years. Of course, in-person learning was temporarily halted by the COVID-19 pandemic. With most of our classes being paid in advance, it meant that we couldn’t just close down. We needed to either refund families or deliver the service. The choice was obvious, the path was not. We needed to replicate the in-person environment, the very thing that made us unique, in an online environment.

Shifting to a purely online model presented certain challenges to our organization. Our immediate focus shifted to creating the platform. Within a few weeks, we had the capability to go online. In hindsight, creating the platform was not the heavy lifting. We underestimated the amount of customer service we would need to pull this off. Our soft launch was a clear indicator, that it would be all hands on deck to onboard our families to online learning. Sending the written instructions for accessing our online classroom was not adequate. We created video tutorials and met with each family over the phone to walk them through the required steps. Despite being as proactive as we could to prepare families for the transition, we had a number of staff ready to put out fires on the official launch date. Our instructors had to play the dual role of tech support, ready to offer tech advice in addition to teaching code. Additionally, we had to build spillover classrooms for makeup classes that were a result of technological issues and students that couldn’t keep up with the pace of the class (a problem that exists in the in-person classroom but is exacerbated in an online environment). It was a challenging transition.

We did our best to carry our in-person experience into the online arena, but the online environment couldn’t replicate the in-person experience for every learner. However, our online environment did satisfy a certain niche. Going into this fall, we have resumed in-person learning, but decided to keep an online option. Having the infrastructure in place as well our experience from the spring, has made for a much smoother online experience. There have been business benefits as well. Being online has allowed us to reach students that our outside of our geography and also allows us to be more flexible when scheduling students. We expect our online offering to be a fixture of the business moving forward.

– Jamie Chang, Managing Director, Under the GUI Academy