November 2017 Operations Manual Release: Assistant Center Directors, SEO Guidelines, The Extension Program, MU Individual Course Assignment, and a new Background Screening Program

We are pleased to announce more updates to our Operations Manual!  As we approach the holidays and attendance begins to slow down, this is a great time to provide more training opportunities for your staff, focus on marketing goals, master new educational materials, and ensure that your center is set up for the new year.

In this release, we include new resources on how to develop your staff, specifically your Assistant Center Directors. You will also see that recent updates in Mathnasium University enable you to assign individual courses to your employees. Additionally, we provide you with more information on how to effectively use SEO to develop a strong online presence. You can also read up on recent updates to our educational systems that reference new extension assessments, the Extension Program, and other educational material that will be mentioned in the upcoming Education Department blog post. Lastly, please make sure to read the new background screening program and compliance steps that will be implemented next year.

Release Highlights:

Exceptional People:

• New Micro-system:
  • Conduct Instructor Training: Develop Assistant Center Directors
• Updated Micro-system:
  • Initiate Employment: Perform Background Check
• New Resources:
  • Assistant Center Director Job Description
  • Assistant Center Director Performance Evaluation
  • Background Screening Vendor Guide

Lead Generation:

• Updated Micro-system:
  • Develop an Internet Presence – Manage Your Microsite For Better Visibility
  • Generate Awareness – Engage in Public Relations
• New Resources:
  • Best Practices – Header Tags for SEO
  • Microsite SEO Basics

Right Materials:

• Updated Micro-systems:
  • Assess Students: Administer an Assessment
  • Assess Students: Choose an Assessment

Assistant Center Director Resources:

We have released formal resources to help you define, develop, and manage Assistant Center Directors. We have included detailed steps on how to transition critical center responsibilities to Assistant Center Directors. The Assistant Center Director Job Description provides a comprehensive overview and template of the role. The Assistant Center Director Performance Evaluation enables you to objectively rate Assistant Center Directors across established performance standards.

Assign Individual Courses in Mathnasium University:

The Training Department is excited to announce the release of individual online courses on Mathnasium University. Previously, users were only been able to request online courses as part of a larger curriculum; however, with this update to MU, users can request or assign individual courses to their own Transcripts. The courses are the same as those within the Mathnasium Franchise Owner, Mathnasium Resale, and Center Director curricula, but now the courses within these curricula will be available on an a la carte basis. This feature can be especially useful for staff members who only need to complete certain courses from a particular curriculum, without having to request the curriculum in its entirety. One example of a course that could be individually assigned to any staff member is the recently released “Basic Parent Relationships” course that is in the Assistant Center Director curriculum.

In order to find these individual courses more easily within “Browse for Training”, we have updated the course titles with their corresponding Success Factor. In addition, you will find that each Success Factor now has its own thumbnail photo in MU for easy identification.

For more information, please consult the Mathnasium University Walkthrough Guide (M2 ^[1] or Radius ^[2]) on how to request or assign online courses, or head to the Browse for Training section in MU to see the courses available!

Marketing SEO Updates:

Search Engine Optimization guidelines have been updated in the following microsystems: Develop an Internet Presence – Manage Your Microsite For Better Visibility and Generate Awareness – Engage in Public Relations. These updates include outlining how to effectively set up your microsite for optimization, as well as, guidelines on how to position your center to cultivate leads online.

Educational Systems:

Minor edits reflect the new Extension Program, as well as, other educational material. Please reference the Educational Department’s upcoming post on Matters for further details.

Background Screening Program:

We have re-evaluated our background check vendors and are making changes to ensure franchisees are running packages that meet our screening requirements at extremely competitive pricing. Any new hires after 01/31/2018 will be required to have a background check completed by one of the following approved vendors:

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

These vendors have been vetted and tested before being selected to ensure all proper databases are being searched for all new hires. See below for transition details.

Why we are making this change:

Allowing franchisees to select any vendor and run background screenings has proven ineffective, and in many cases has led to employees not being sufficiently screened. Background check providers often use confusing language and don’t follow a single standard in their labels for screening services, which makes it challenging to independently identify the correct databases to search, the level of validation required to authenticate a search, and evaluating price against the quality of a background screening. For example, vendors might offer and run generic screening at a very low price that do not sufficiently validate searches at the county level. This type of screening may appear to meet our requirements, but leaves holes when identifying possible criminal history of a candidate.

As a result, we concluded that background check screening must be standardized and ordered exclusively from approved vendors with specific minimum packages used for all employees. Our center employees work directly with children and must have a comprehensive criminal background check completed. This change also eliminates the time and challenge required for franchisees to select background screening, while reducing screening costs.

Approved Vendor Partners:

After extensive vetting and testing, we have decided to partner with Sterling Solution, Universal, IntelliCorp, and Checkr. We evaluated vendors across multiple criteria, including franchisee feedback, level of service automation, reporting capabilities, national accreditation, customer service, experience working with franchised organizations, and experience working with organizations who work with children. We have personally tested all the approved vendors and packages to verify quality and integrity. We considered vendors that franchisees reported via survey as well as industry leaders, including ADP, US Info Search, HireRight, Verified Credentials, Safeguard, and others.  However, these other providers did not meet our criteria for approval for one or more of the following reasons:

• The inability to partner, report, or scale nationally with our size network
• Poor customer service, reviews, or franchisee feedback
• A lack of a comprehensive screening package meeting our requirements
• Poor technology, client portals, or process automation for ease of use and reliable turnaround time
• Price

What to do next:

You will need to register with an approved vendor after 01/31/2018 if you are not currently using one of these vendors for your background checks. You will not be required to re-run background screening on currently employed staff who have already been screened. If you are already registered with one of the approved vendors, no change will be needed, but you must use the new Mathnasium package at a minimum going forward (your account will be identified and converted to the new packages). Minimum packages from each of these vendors all search the required databases and validate searches at the county level to ensure comprehensive background screening. However, pricing varies slightly depending on how services are processed and supported.  PLEASE SEE BACKGROUND SCREENING VENDOR GUIDE (M2 ^[7] or Radius ^[2]) TO GET STARTED.

Important Links:

• Operations Manual (Salesforce/M2 Version) ^[8]
• Operations Manual (Radius) ^[2]

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