8 Ideas for Effectively Managing your Salon Staff

Having a prosperous salon business isn’t easy, especially when you have to manage your staff.  As a small business owner, it’s your main duty to keep your team motivated and to stay one step ahead of your competitors.

When Goldie created a survey about what are the challenges of running a hair salon, motivating and managing a salon staff came at the top of the list, together with retaining clients and paying monthly expenses. 

In this article, we’re going to share with you 8 practical ideas you can use to effectively manage your salon staff. 

Salon staff management ideas

1. Hire the right people

As a salon owner, you will choose who can be part of your salon staff and who can’t. With this in mind, having great management skills and correctly analyzing people are essential for your business’s success. 

Hiring new salon members consist of choosing professionals with great technical skills, good communicators, and, generally, open-minded people who are ready to align with your salon culture. 

Co-workers who have similar values as yous contribute to creating an equilibrated salon environment, preventing possible communication crises in the future. 

2. Organize weekly meetings

Meetings are the main occasions to discuss what’s new in your hair salon and the best way to manage your salon staff effectively. 

You can create a weekly subject line for your meetings and discuss points like professional achievements, number of new clients, possible conflicts, and so on. You can even have debates and create your salon marketing strategy together, thinking about how to promote your salon members and services.

 Allowing each of your salon staff members to speak will make them feel appreciated and valued and will encourage productive dialogue between them. 

So, keep in mind that formal weekly meetings are not a waste of time, but a real opportunity to maintain harmony in your staff and to lead a successful salon business. 

3. Use a staff planner

A great way to effectively manage your salon staff is to use a salon staff management software. For example, with Goldie, you can keep track of your staff member’s schedules and improve their daily performance. In the calendar, you’ll be able to view and set all your staff member’s existing appointments, services, and working hours. Plus, each of them will be able to manage their schedule professionally. It also has a web version available, so you have an even clearer view of your schedule by managing it on your laptop.

This is a great way to book appointments in a modern way and to keep all your salon staff information in one place. Besides that, your team’s productivity will increase, as clients can book their favorite staff member online with just a tap on your salon’s booking link.

You can share your online booking link with all your clients or potential clients on social media and permanently keep your calendar fully booked.  Also, you can make sure thety will show up to their appointment by taking deposits and payments online. Also, Goldie lets you collect payments from clients contactless with just your phone, without a POS or any extra equipment required, and you can keep track of all your staff’s income.

You can download this salon staff management app directly from the App Store or Google Play.

4. Make your total salon income transparent

Transparency is key while managing your salon staff. Since there may be many discussions about the salon’s income, you should be transparent and share financial reports with your staff. 

In the app that I mentioned above, you have performance reports for every staff member, where you can see your total salon earnings and even earnings per staff member. 

You can share these data in your weekly meetings and discuss them to create a healthy competitivity in your staff. Anyway, be aware not to transform it into a race! 

5. Promote your brand culture

Your salon’s culture consists of your common mission, values, and beliefs. To manage your salon staff effectively, they should share and embrace the same values. 

When creating your brand culture, make sure that each of your staff members contributes in a way or another. This will make it easier for them to embrace it and promote it.

6. Lead by example

You can not expect something from your employees to believe in something you don’t. An effective staff management strategy is to be a real leader for your team. 

It is easy to create tasks for others and to control them, but to become a real leader, you have to work together with your team on those tasks and accomplish your mission together. Here’s an article about becoming a better leader at work, what skills you need, and how you should behave while managing your salon staff. 

7. Make it more than a hair salon

With a little bit of creativity, you can turn your hair salon into a multi-functional space to attract more clients and to promote your salon’s image. 

For example, you can design a small corner where to create a mini-bar. Salon decor ideas have been highly creative in the last few years, and there would be nothing surprising about having a bar in your salon, where your staff and you can enjoy a cup of coffee during breaks and discuss. This way, they will disconnect a little bit from work and will create a stronger connection, totally forgetting that they’re still in a hair salon.

Another thing you can do is to attend workshops and educational events related to beauty. Transforming your hair salon into an educational hub increases motivation in your salon and inspires your staff. Plus, it is a great PR strategy if you think about inviting other professionals in your industry or other hair salon owners. 

8. Track your team success

You can not know if all these 7 steps to motivate your salon staff is helpful until you measure your results. If you practice at least some of them, you should start seeing improvements in your salon staff management. 

If you’ve been wondering how you can track your management success, well, the answer is simple. The best way is to receive honest feedback directly from your staff. For example, you can create an intern survey, maybe even anonymous, and ask your staff members once a month to evaluate your leadership skills and your management style.

You can use statements that can be answered with true or false, or even to give them the chance to note how true it is from 1 to 5. Another way to create your management survey is to formulate questions and ask your co-workers to answer them simply. Questions can be something like “do you feel appreciated for your work?”, “do you feel that I’m taking your feedback seriously?” “do you know what the values in this salon are?” or “how does it feel working in this salon?”. 

All these questions will give your staff members the freedom to express honestly how do they feel and will help you improve the way you manage your salon staff.

Conclusion

Your team is the main element that brings income to your salon, and effectively managing your staff motivates them to do it. Making a business work is not only about you. It’s about the talent, the people, the products you use, and the services you provide.

Not knowing how to manage your salon staff can lead to a lack of productivity and, of course, to an income decrease.

I hope you found in this article some helpful, practical ideas about how to manage your staff effectively. Feel free to share it with any co-workers or industry mates if you feel this could be helpful. 

Waiting forward for your opinion on these 8 ideas about salon management in the comments section below.