Your greatest assets are your employees.
They have the ability to make the greatest difference in your salon or spa, both in a positive manner and in a negative fashion. If you build them up, it will grow your business and also motivate them to continue working for you!
Scheduling
Having a routine schedule prevents any confusion. Create a regular schedule for your employees, complete with assigned breaks. Coffee or meal breaks during a work shift are often required by law, and also gives employees a chance to relax and reset. Dealing with clients back to back can sometimes be frustrating and flustering, especially when a service goes longer than expected. Further, having a break in the schedule allows your employees to catch up on their schedule if they do fall a bit behind. While it can sometimes be justified, the next client may not be pleased to find out that they will need to wait half an hour past their scheduled appointment time.
Vacation requests can add more complexity to the schedule, especially when pre-booked appointments would be affected. Set up a vacation policy if you have not done so already.
Manage your employee schedules with Insight Salon & Spa Software! Set a regular or rotating schedule, and easily move appointments to give your employees a day off!
Development
Bringing in an educator or sending staff to attend a course is valuable, but it can be costly. An alternative is to learn from each other. Everyone has a set of strengths and some areas for improvement. Identify at least one strength of each employee and ask them to make a presentation during an upcoming staff meeting.
Topics can range from color application tips to business advice or from people skills (how to talk to clients and make them feel at ease) to organizational skills. The presentations do not have to be long or technical. The idea is to learn something from everyone and to have everyone feel like they are a valued part of the team.
Another way to learn from each other is to shadow each other. One service provider may be great in the technical aspects of the job while another may be amazing at selling products. Consider pairing them up for a day or two to learn from each other. As salons are often quieter in January and February, this may be a great time to try this.
To help you identify some strengths, you can run employee reports within Insight to determine who is having success with retail sales, who is booked most frequently, and more.
Structure employee evaluation discussions with a free review template:
Empowerment
Beyond training, you can assign greater responsibilities to employees. If a stylist is struggling with retail sales, perhaps she is uncomfortable with selling a product that she doesn’t believe in. Allow her to help choose items on the next order that she would be excited to sell. Or if a nail technician is interested in team management, perhaps she would be willing to take on employee scheduling or payroll. Your staff members will learn new skills and also feel more engaged in the business.
Empowering certain staff members does not mean losing control. With Insight, you can determine who has access to specific areas of the program. For example, you can decide to only allow your Senior Stylist to give discounts whereas your receptionist may be the only one who can send and read emails.
Recognition
Last, but not least, is to recognize and appreciate your employees. Again, they are your most valuable asset and deserve to be treated as such. Show your appreciation for them!
Track employee details in Insight, and never forget to celebrate milestones like birthdays, work anniversaries, or reaching performance goals!
Insight Salon & Spa Software helps you to manage your employees. Scheduling, time clock, payroll, performance tracking, and more. Contact us at 1-888-919-5841 or sales@salon-software.com to learn more.
