“A house divided will never succeed. ” Jon Gonzales
Finding, hiring decisions and keeping staff will always be a challenge.
I’m always asked the same questions by salon owners. How do I find my diamond in the rough?
How do I write my terms of employment? How do I attract top talent? How do I establish strong work habits for my team?
How do I screen a potential new member to my team? How do I avoid staff turnover? How do I determine who fits in with my team? What are the pros and cons of hiring experienced vs inexperienced staff.
How do I implement an easy to learn training program? How do I make sure I’m not violating the rights of my workers? The list of questions goes on and on.
These are just some of the questions you need to to find answers to when building your championship team. I hope this blog post will be of help.
First of all I do not believe hairdressers perform poorly on purpose. Many of our challenges are caused because during the hiring process. Many salon owners fail to clearly define job expectations and how your job expectations will be measured when integrating your new member to your team. Many of your challenges can be avoided if you let your new prospect know what to expect of their job duties.
The inability to hire and screen out a new member to your team is one of the leading causes of staff turmoil. My book Creating Your Salon would be a great asset to this article.
The 1st step to making sure you hire the right person will be in writing employee handbook.
Make sure your employee handbook has a provision explaining your terms of employment during the interview, orientation, and training process so there will be no misunderstanding between staff and management. Leave nothing to guess work. I have listed a few tips that will help you meet these challenges with confidence.
Follow these tips:
Probation — I suggest that you set a six month probation period. Make sure you state that your salon is an at-will salon which means that you can let them go at any time during probationary period and they can quit at any time as well. This probation period will help you see if your new hire will share your vision, goals, and employee training guidelines.Make sure you state that their employment is not a contract for employment in your terms of employment.
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 and help you grow your business.
Salon Orientation-— Make sure you cover everything from draping, customer handling procedures, telephone etiquette, quality control guidelines etc. The higher your training guidelines, the greater chance of developing an outstanding new member to your team.
Quality control — Before they work on any customers, let your new member of your them assist , observe other hairdressers, and when you feel they understand your high quality control standards , elevate to junior stylist at reduced prices under your supervision or your director of education or one of your other master stylists. My employee development books will be of great help. Click Here
Lack of hands on experience is a challenge when hiring young talent.
You certainly can’t let them charge the same prices as your experienced staff.
For a complete junior stylist program review my junior stylist training program. Click here.
Define Your Goals and Expectations — during their orientation period, make sure they share your goals, vision, and team culture,this should all be spelled out under your terms of employment.
Monitor Their Performance — Referrals and customer return rate will be their score card. Are they following your salon’s quality control programs.
I do hope these few guidelines will help you develop a fantastic team.