“Many of your employment challenges could be avoided if you clearly define your expectations.” – Jon Gonzales
When you make your decision to add a new member to your team, make sure you clearly define your terms of employment. Make sure your new team member shares your vision, goals, and educational guidelines,before you make your final decision.
Many of our challenges in hiring people are due to poor training and education of many hairdressers during their formative years. Most people that enter the beauty profession, do so with unrealistic earning and career expectations. Many are exposed to all the glitter and hype of many of our trade shows and fail to learn basic salon skills for our everyday customers who want easy to manage hair styles, offer high levels of customer service, and hairdressers that are skilled at listening and committed to work hard to exceed client expectations. Without the proper education and mentoring, many of our young hairdressers soon become discouraged and disillusioned and eventually leave the profession. Many more go from salon to salon searching for that perfect salon. there are no perfect salons. Along the way they develop poor work habits and negativity
I think you will all agree that 9 months of beauty school is not enough time to teach them all the skills they need to work in an upscale salon.
Lack of hands on practice and experience with real people is a real challenge,especially with the new labor laws on minimum and overtime mandates.
Paying people to learn can be costly.
You can’t afford to let young starters learn on paying customers. Allowing them to charge the same prices as your experienced is not the answer.
Consider implementing your own apprenticeship or junior stylist program program of charging a reduced rate which will enable them to gain hands on experience under the supervision of your director of education and master stylist.
The money they bring in will pay for their training.
This helps your new staff member build self confidence as well as gain hands on experience without jeopardizing your client retention efforts.
It will also help you measure their growth and development. Of course this should be done after your salon orientation procedures.Click here.
In the absence of an apprenticeship program you must train and develop your own. It starts with your terms of employment.
Assuming you already have a staff development program and have chosen your new member I suggest the following.
Probation — I suggest that you set a six month probation period. This allows you to monitor their performance, to see if they are willing to follow your quality control guidelines. Make sure you state that your salon is an at-will salon which means that you can let them go during probationary period and they can quit at any time as well
Employee Hand book — How can you expect your staff to perform if they don’t know what is expected and how those expectations will be measured. Your employee hand book should be the foundation to developing your team .
Salon Orientation— Make sure you review everything from proper draping , your terms of employment, customer handling procedures, telephone etiquette, quality control guidelines etc.
Employee Training — establishing positive attitudes and work habits should be a high priority. Invest in your salon.s greatest profit potential –educate your team.
Quality Control — Before allowing your new staff members work on any customers, let them assist, observe other hairdressers, and when you feel they understand your high standards, elevate to junior stylist at reduced prices under your supervision.
Define Your Goals and Expectations — during their orientation period, make sure they share your goals, vision, and team culture. Make sure they will follow your terms of employment.
These tips can and will help eliminate many of your internal challenges and help you take your business and team to the next level. For complete information. Click here.