” As leader of your team,you must earn the trust and loyalty of your team.” Jon Gonzales
Staff turnover will always be a challenge for salon owners, especially with the growing trend towards franchise suites and booth rental. Sometimes one of your peak performers may want to enter another field,or is simply moving from the community.
Developing a staff retention program will help you combat this growing challenge.
The following tips will help you formulate your own plan of action in taking preventative steps in maintaining staff and business stability.
The following guidelines will help you address this very critical business challenge.
Poor Hiring Decisions — is a one of the leading causes of staff turnover and internal salon challenges facing salon owners. Make sure you develop your staff development program to minimize making hiring mistakes. My book Creating Your Salon will help you develop your own staff development program. A trial and error to team building is just to costly. Click here.
No Educational Guidelines — how can you expect your staff to perform if they do not know what you expect from them and how your expectations will be measured. It is your responsibility to provide educational resources and educational guidelines that will help your staff reach higher levels of excellence. Invest in your salon’s greatest profit potential — educate your staff.
Poor Owner – Hairdresser Communication — always keep lines of communication open between staff and management. From time to time seek out feed back from your staff members. One on one evaluations from time to time will be beneficial to not only you as an owner but also your staff. Create a salon environment of trust not fear.
No Business Plan and Business Structure —. Show your staff that you are organized and structured. Make their jobs easy to learn and understand.
No Employee Handbook — your employee hand book should serve as a vital part of your employee training and development program. Your employee hand book should include orientation procedures, terms of employment, rules and regulations, job expectations and how they will be measured and other information that will make their jobs easier. My book Creating Your Salon also will help you write your own.
Lack of Leadership Skills — the inability to motivate and inspire your staff to higher levels of excellence is a major challenge among salon owners. As leader of your team it is your responsibility to take your team to higher levels of excellence. Refer to my book on Leadership Click here
A Negative and Unprofessional Salon Environment — make sure you create a positive and professional salon environment so your staff enjoys coming to work everyday. Do not tolerate salon gossip, pettiness and negativity to infiltrate your salon. This type of behavior also affects your customers.
Turnover — work hard to prevent turnover. Turnover not only affects the growth of your business in terms of wasted time and money, turnover affects the livelihoods of your other staff members as well as contributing to a negative and unprofessional business environment for your customers. Read my blog article on turnover.
Lack of Praise and Incentives — Sometimes a little pat on the back or a note in their pay envelope offering praise will do wonders. Incentives can also improve staff performance and productivity.
Inability to Combat Staff Pirating — sadly many salon owners will try to recruit your key staff members in the hopes that they bring a clientele. Please read my business article Beware the Grass is Greener Syndrome and share with your team, also my article bridging the Gap between Staff and Management as well.
For more information on addressing these concerns I urge you to use my management books that provide thorough answers to owning a successful and profitable business. I also urge you to read my weekly blogs at hcds4you.com/blog/
Soon I will be launching my highly popular hairdressers Guide to Success and Happiness seminars for hairdressers soon
Web Site: www.hcds4you.com
Contact : 1-800-390-4237
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Why hairdressers change jobs
Unrealistic career and earning expectations
Salon gossip and pettiness
Poor job change decisions –inability to avoid the grass is greener syndrome
Poor communication between staff and management
Lack of a team environment
Too much down time — lack of customers – who’s really at fault?
No standards of performance
Burnout and fatigue
No growth opportunities
No incentives or rewards
No performance and expectation standards
Lack of education