7 Effective Techniques to Retain Your Salon Staff

Retaining employees is amongst the biggest problems that the business owners have to face irrespective of their business scale and size. If you have trouble in retaining your employees, then it is not a good sign as it prevents good employees from entering in your company. Therefore, one must know how to keep your employees in your salon. You can use technology such as salon software to manage and track employees’ performance; this can help you in retaining your employees.

There are plenty of other methods that will help with employee retention. We will learn about them in this article. Most importantly, you must make the employees feel comfortable to work, help them, show them that you are a family so that they don’t feel obliged to follow your orders. If you make them feel like family, then they will work by giving in diligent efforts and will help you in meeting the common business objective. Keep a note of all their efforts and track their performance through salon software and reward them accordingly.

Treating the employees differently or always scolding them for not meeting their target will not make them work for you. They may start working just for the sake of it and not with their diligent effort. This will hamper the quality of the work and this can further decrease the customer service. “In unity there is strength”, hence, work together to achieve your goals.

Here are some of the effective tips that will help you to retain your salon staff:

1. Hire the Right Staff – Hiring the right staff is important to retain them. How? Let us find out. When you hire the staff that is right for the job, they will know how to do their work. This will create no room for mistakes and also the quality of the work would be according to the standard. Since, the work done is accurate you or the client will not have any reason to complain and the employees can carry on their tasks as they use to. In this manner, there is no need for the employee to worry or complain.

On the contrary, if you hire unskilled staff, then their work can have certain errors and the quality of the work can also be less. This can create a problem as clients can complain about it and you will also need to regularly keep track of those employees. This will put the employee under pressure and it can again hamper the quality of the work. Hence, it is better to hire the staff members that are right for the job. This is the significance of hiring the right candidate for the right job.

2. Clear Your Expectation to Your Staff – Another important thing to consider is to tell your staff what you expect from them. They are not going to know what you want from them unless you state it clearly. Also, it is always better to make the person aware of his or her duties and responsibilities that entail his or her job.

Even it is pretty obvious what a person has to do, still, you must tell them what kind of work is expected from them. This will help the employee plan the method of his or her work so that they can complete their task or perform according to your expectations. On the day of the joining, enter the employees’ data in your salon software and make it clear to them about all the duties their designation or job title entails.

Doing so will help that employee to concentrate his or her efforts in that particular direction. They will formulate methods to complete the work and perform according to your expectations. Hence, it is important to tell your staff beforehand what kind of work is expected from them.

3. Keep an Open Door Policy – It is important to keep an open-door policy in your salon. Doing so helps the employees get in touch with you if they have any problem. It is essential to have this policy because it is better if the employees can let you know in case there is a problem. If a particular hereditary is followed in your salon, then that is also fine.

But there should be a method specified for resolving the employee grievances. If you use best salon software in which communication is possible, then make sure employees can book a certain time so that they can talk to you about their problem/ suggestion or opinion. In this way, this task can be done in a timely and informed manner.

4. Motive and Recognize the Efforts of Staff Members – A thing that keeps a person working is motivation. Hence, they must be regularly motivated to achieve their target and perform their work with diligent efforts. Usually a great motivating factor that keeps staff working is money. But for some, it is for their satisfaction or passion to do a certain task.

You need to recognize different methods through which, you can motivate your employees. For instance, give them weekly or monthly challenges. Post these challenges in employees’ profiles using your salon management software. You can also conduct a meeting and let them know about it. Set rewards for the winners. Rewards will be a great motivating factor for all the employees.

Don’t forget to recognize the efforts of your staff members. If you see your staff working hard, give them compliments such as “great work, keep it up, you are very hardworking, you will surely achieve success”, etc. These are simple sentences to say but when you tell this to your employees, it will fill them with enthusiasm and confidence. They will know that you are keeping an eye on them and are aware of their hard work. This will make them work harder and with full concentration.

5. Reward Your Staff – The next important thing is to reward the employees. If you don’t reward them, they will feel demotivated and might think, “no matter how hard we work nobody is going to recognize this”; therefore, it is important to reward them. We don’t want employees to be demotivated as the quality of the work will be hampered due to this. Make a schedule were on a specific day you will reward all the clients. Float a message on your salon management software or through emails.

On that particular day reward the members of the staff. The staff members who achieve their targets should be given the predetermined prizes. For instance, you can give the winning employees awards or certificates such as employee of the week/ month, or some cash price.

But make sure, the winners are selected according to their hard work and not due to any favoritism. Avoid favoritism as it can lead to demotivation. Due to this, the employees won’t work hard next time. Hence, choose the right winner according to their work and not according to their designation or your personal choices. In this way, motivating them will be helpful and strengthen your relationship with the salon staff.

6. Organize Fun Activities for Staff Members – Even though it is the duty of the employees to work, you must provide them some leisure time or some fun activities. Even the employees get bored doing their mundane tasks every day. Hence, for refreshing them you need to give them a break. You can plan some fun activities during the break or on a different day. It depends from one salon to another how they want to give their employees a day off from the regular work.

You can organize a weekly refreshment party for your employees or monthly. Some organizations have annual functions too. Therefore, it is completely up to you, how you wish to choose. If you are planning any such activity, then upload in the employees’ schedule using salon management software so that they are well aware of it. This will also help in retaining employees.

7. Provide Individual Feedback – Last but not the least is to provide feedback to the employees. Every person wishes to excel and grow while doing their job. You must help them in doing so. Set a particular day where you have one to one talk with your employees. If your staff members are more, then organized this for certain days so that you can provide individual attention to all the employees.

Update this feedback session in the employee’s schedule through the salon management software and let them know about their one to one session. In this session, talk to them about how they are, how are they doing their job, is there any difficulty, do they have any opinion suggestion or complaint? Is there any problem? Etc. Once you get answers to all these questions and then start with their performance report. Salon software helps in generating employee reports that can help you track their performance.

Using this report, tell the employees regarding their performance. If they have performed up to the mark, then appreciate them for their hard work and try to boost their morale. Also, motivate the other employees with mediocre or below the average performance. Ask them why they could not perform better and tell them to try harder next time. Such employees should be dealt with patience and not anger. Therefore, don’t start yelling at them, try to understand them and help them work hard next time.

These are some of the best methods that can be used for retaining the employees. Using these methods along with the salon management software will help you in managing and retaining the employees. Therefore, make efficient use of the salon software effectively and retain your employees.