By far the biggest problem the salon owner faced in 2016 was staffing.
Not attracting staff and not being able to keep staff was the biggest issue salon owner’s had this year.
Did you suffer from this?
It will also be the biggest problem salon owners face in 2017 as well as de regulation roles out and more and more people are working micro salons.
So next time you think negative about……….
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That the only one that cares how your salon is doing is you- and you feel that your staff only care about their wages
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You’re too busy to run the salon and deal with staff issues- so the staff start doing their own thing, and you end up with a salon that is nothing like the one you dreamed.
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You’re having problems finding staff, you advertise and advertise but no applies to your ads. You think it’s not your problem as all salons are suffering finding staff.
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You’re tired of having unmotivated staff , you once loved coming to work but now the staff just make your stomach turn, you are starting to despise them and you hate yourself for it. But why do some salon owners NOT have this issue.
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With out staff your salon will stagnate and decline over the years, its your responsibility to provide your staff with the motivation to succeed.
DID YOU KNOW?
27 per cent of salon owners reported that they lost an employee to higher pay,
35% per cent of employees are looking for new jobs right now.
That is scary right! Your employees may be thinking of leaving you for better pay or better working conditions. This WILL effect you no matter where you salon stands today, you need to act more professional and start seeing that the old way is broken. You need to find the new way!
I have salons in my Mastermind group that get plenty of applicants when they need them. And also seem to keep staff much longer then other salons in their town.
Asking yourself one major question will help you attract better staff and also stop staff from leaving.
WHY SHOULD A PERSON COME AND WORK FOR YOU?
WHAT DO YOU OFFER THEM?
If you check out my Masterclass here it’s free and I explain how to attract clients and staff alike, it will also help you become a better salon owner. Here is the link.
I believe if you had a salon that was pumping busy and you made great money, most of your staffing problems would be gone.
Let me explain.
If you paid your staff $1,000 a week plus a weeks training in New York, Paris, London or Sydney every year, how ,any staff would leave you. You train them to be the best, educate them and pay them well. I would say not many. I would also go to say that if your advert explained this you would attract staff from all over he country. Word would spread that you are the employer of choice. So if you could afford that then your staffing issues would be none existent. So all you have to do is get busy easy hey.
Well actually I have a step-by-step formula that builds foundations in your salon, it includes a way to grow your salon by 33% this year. Yep 33% It’s all explained in my mastermind FREE training program.
Click here and reserve your seat today.
I wish you all the best success in the world and after seeing my Masterclass and implementing what you learn I’m sure you will be working smarter and leaving the harder to others.
Join me and say NO to being another statistic
But what’s worse than staff leaving you?
The worst is when you have a mass walk out and it is so devastating. If you have never experienced a mass staff leaving then you are lucky, but I would start planning, because it can take you back years and that’s if you are lucky, most salons never recover from a mass walk out. This is so common now a day it’s just not funny.
So why do your employees leave you in waves and how to stop it
“Wait…You’re not leaving, too?”
I still remember that total surprise in my salon as 98% of my staff handed in their notice and left me with just one trainee and a salon full of clients. I thought this is it, we are gone, doomed, and we will have to close. But I surprised myself. It’s when situations like this happen in your salon that you really find how good your systems are. Well let me tell you I am a systems nut, and my systems were watertight. I just didn’t survived 6 staff leaving I grew my business to the best takings ever.
Would you cope if all but one staff left you and your salon? Are your systems that good? They need to be?
Losing a single employee can cost tens of thousands of dollars, which means a wave of employee turnover can quickly run up costs ranging into the hundreds of thousands. No one can afford that kind of hit financially or to productivity, yet it so commonly happens, causing employee turnover rates for some companies to spike as high as 30-40% annually.
To understand how to stop a wave of departures from happening, we must first understand why waves happen in the first place.
We’re social creatures.
Salon work is one such community, complete with politics, drama, alliances, and social norms. As social creatures, we talk about the good, the bad, and each other.
If one staff member perceives a problem, chances are others feel it and have talked about it, too. Whatever is bugging one person is usually bugging others; they just haven’t told anyone yet or you missed the signs? It’s these irritants that build up enough to lead people to consider leaving.
Their departure is a wake up call.
Even if they’re not close friends with the person leaving, it can be a wake up call to them and everyone else in the salon. They may ask themselves, “If they’re leaving, maybe I should too,” or, “If he got that kind of offer, I wonder what I could get?” This means that even people that weren’t at risk can become a risk just out of curiosity or a fear that, “the rats are leaving a sinking ship.”
It’s easy for employees to get set in their ways and put up with a tough situation. They can be (DO YOU MEAN UNCORMFORTABLE)comfortable at your salon for any number of reasons and finally seeing someone do something dramatic (like interviewing or leaving) can make them re-evaluate what they’re tolerating.
Depending on how the person’s departure is handled, it can also generate strong feelings; the true colours of a salon’s leadership can show in tough situations like this. If everyone that leaves is wished well and thanked for their efforts, people will have a very different opinion than if they’re booted out the door and criticised behind their backs.
The Bottom Line: When someone leaves for another job, it makes everyone else on the team re-evaluate his or her situation and consider at least looking around. For some, that can mean simply take notice on Facebook at a local salons job offer that they are bombarded with daily.
Momentum takes time to build and time to stop
Most people do not quit their jobs on a whim. It takes a lot to decide to interview elsewhere and accept an offer. It can be scary to pretend you have a dentist appointment to take an interview and pretend there are no problems if someone asks you.
Realising that the problems they have must be pretty bad to consider leaving, it’s likely that those issues are affecting many others on the team too. You have to diffuse them and convince people things are getting better and changing if you expect them to stay. Unfortunately, that does not happen overnight.
Problems build up over time. They grow and spread the longer they linger. Fixing big problems is one of the hardest things for an owner to deal with; it can consume much of your time and prevent you from getting in front of other small problems. Your one ally is progress; if you can start showing progress on the critical issues, you might just convince some of the team things are going to get better.
The Bottom Line: Whatever has built up to cause people to consider leaving will take time to turn around, and until it has been, it will be a source of motivation for employees departing.
Once people are leaving, the deck is stacked against you. But it’s not impossible to turn the tide. It just takes some hard work and focusing on your people.
CLICK HERE to save your spot for the training
How to Stop an Employee Turnover Wave
Assume everyone is leaving and have a chat with them.
You should talk to everyone on the team; Reassure them and let them know the big picture (what will happen now the staff member has left). That means everyone is a part of the solutions suggested below.
Realise as well that even those that stick around may only be doing it out of necessity such as a big life event approaching (wedding, baby, buying a house).
There’s also a good chance everyone on the team is not as productive and motivated as they could be during this time, so if you fix the status quo everyone will produce at a higher level.
Don’t take anyone for granted. Invest in listening to and improving things for everyone on the team.
Accept the status quo is not working.
Just because you’re happy or satisfied doesn’t mean anyone else is. If people are leaving, it’s a huge signal that there’s problems to be dealt with. Be open to their feedback and issues they bring up. The solutions may be difficult for you to adjust to, but realise that the situation is dire; it’s change or lose them.
You need to really deeply accept this before you start talking to someone. Otherwise, you’ll likely find yourself being defensive of anything you hear and find it hard to bring about any of the change you need to. Only once you accept change must happen are you ready to turn the tide on a wave of employee departures.
When multiple team members are leaving, it’s a sign that change is needed. Embrace that mindset.
Have open, honest, lengthy one-on-ones.
It’s usually not any one reason for everyone considering leaving; there are likely a bunch of problems that have built up that combined to cause it. You must prioritise giving plenty of time for people to air their grievances. This may slow down some work, but it beats the lost productivity when you don’t have a team member and we know how hard it is to find others.
You should keep doing one-on-ones long after this turnover wave is a distant memory to ensure you never return to this kind of crisis. Remember: while you may be really busy, an investment in these one-on-ones pay back many times over:
Start making time with everyone on the team weekly and keep having time with them so problems never overflow again. Just a few minutes a week to say hi and a little chat goes a long way.
Listen & show empathy.
Resist the temptation to be defensive. The only way this works is if you respect their opinions and understand that the alternative is losing them altogether. They may not even trust you enough to really open up on the biggest problems, so do your best to empathise with their view of the world; they likely don’t have access to the same information you do, nor the same perspective of what’s going on in the salon and on the team as you do.
Your job in these meetings is to understand their issues and help create ways to resolve them by listening and asking questions. If you’re looking for some ideas on the kinds of questions to ask, here’s a comprehensive list of one-on-one questions.
Follow through & take action.
The best way to build trust with people that might leave is to *take action* on the feedback they give you. You may not be able to fix all the problems, but even small, incremental progress can really improve people’s morale and attitude.
Chances are, in your first meeting they won’t tell you the deepest, hardest problems bothering them. Instead, you’ll likely get 1 or 2 smaller things that they will use as a test as to whether they can trust you, and to see if anything will change.
If you do nothing at this point, you’ve lost. They’ll say to themselves, “Tara and Dave were right…nothing’s ever going to change around here.” If their honesty is deflected or punished in any way, you’ll never get any truth from them again…until their exit interview. But if you do start showing that progress, you can slowly win them back and get to the bottom of the problems plaguing the team.
Make sure you take action on everything you can from your discussions. Trust is very fragile at this stage and must be rebuilt over time by making progress on what’s important to them.
Want help fighting staff turnover?
If you’re working on an employee turnover problem, you’re probably under a lot of stress and have a lot on your plate. The best thing you can do to help yourself is being very organised and diligent in these one-on-ones.
Have you ever saved someone who was thinking about leaving?
Would you say that 2017 is going to be the year that breaks you away from that broken model?
I want to help you take your salon from the old model and implement the new way to run a salon in 2017.
You see that’s what I do, I help salon owners like you, get more out of their salon.
CLICK HERE to save your spot for the training
Thanks for being a part the Tribe of Revolutionary Salon Owners
Rich