Our business growth, stability and profitability depends heavily on staff retention. The performance of our staff and the avoidance of staff turnover and staff instability are keys to your salon’s success. No salon can continue to grow and be profitable with a constant merry-go-round of staff turnover. How can we grow our business with constant business interruption? How are we to raise prices in this scenario? Maintaining staff stability benefits our salon, our staff, and our profession. Building and maintaining a truly championship team should be a priority. As I speak to thousands of salon owners, I am constantly asked how do I find and keep quality hairdressers who share my vision, my goals, and my quality control standards.
Now with new labor laws and new minimum wage and overtime pay mandated by the government, our challenges are becoming more and more difficult.
Paying people to learn on paying customers is an expensive challenge and can affect your client retention efforts.
The following guidelines can help you avoid staff turnover:
- Develop Your Championship Team — create a team atmosphere where everyone shares the same vision and goals of management is a trade mark of strong management. A house divided will never grow. Make sure when you add a new member to your team, they will be compatible with your other staff members. Be very careful in your hiring decisions.
- Invest in Educating Your Team — invest in your salon’s greatest profit potential: educate your staff. As leader of your team it is your responsibility to take your team to higher levels of excellence. If you can show them how to double and triple their income, you will double and triple your profits. Staff stability presents a very positive and professional salon environment for your customers.
- Create a Positive and Professional Salon Environment — no professional wants to work in a salon where salon gossip, pettiness, and negativity runs rampant. This type of behavior affects your staff, customers. and your bottom line.
- Praise and Recognition — a little pat on the back will work wonders. Maybe a little note in their pay envelope saying they’re doing a great job. As coach of your team, your challenge is to make your staff feel valued and appreciated. Always look at the positives of each staff member. Work hard to build self esteem and self confidence in all your team members.
- Let Them Know Your Expectations — how can you expect your staff to perform if they do not know what your expectations and how those expectations will be measured? Your employee handbook will be a good place to start.
- Be a Mentor — lead by example: create working conditions that foster loyalty. Work hard to help your team be successful. Let them know your door is always open; create an environment of trust, not fear. Always invite employee feedback via one-on-one evaluations.
- Keep Them Busy —with a measured flow of customers through marketing and advertising. Make sure you monitor their performance and client retention rate.
- Develop Your Own Employee Training and Development System — develop an easy to understand quality control learning system. As owner of your business you must develop your own quality control standards.
- Incentives and Rewards — give them incentives and rewards for being a peak performer. Perhaps a gift certificate for dinner, tickets to a movie, a picnic for the entire family, etc. At work, create contests for highest retail sales for the quarter, perhaps best client retention rate, perhaps bonuses for attendance and tardiness. There are many ways to reward your team cost effectively—the bottom line is to try to make their jobs fun and financially rewarding .
By following the above guidelines you can help prevent staff turnover. If you’d like more information on how to combat turnover and low productivity, I encourage you to attend my Las Vegas Seminar next week, July 9-10, a two day business seminar for salon owners. There I will help you identify and prevent many of the causes of staff turnover and teach about improving staff performance, instilling positive work habits and attitudes, how to bridge the gap between staff and management, and improve customer service. (For late registration, feel free to call HCDS at any time.)
These are extremely challenging times, let me be your partner in helping you meet and overcome the many challenges you face in your salon everyday.