Fostering Good Team Communication

When it comes to running a successful salon, communication within your team is key. This article gives some tips to ensure good communication in your salon.

In order to make sure your salon business runs smoothly and offers the best possible service to clients; it is essential for there to be good communication between your stylists. For a salon to work well, all the team members must not only have fantastic skills as stylists, but a good grasp of the salon rules and the different jobs that need to be done throughout the day.  

Many salons have online schedules that detail when each appointment is set so that the team can coordinate and prepare ahead of each client. However, what about other duties? Making sure there is a stylist covering the phone, that there is a fair cleaning schedule to keep the salon in top shape, that another stylist is checking the amount of stock in the salon and another monitoring the salon social media accounts, are all crucial to ensuring the salon runs smoothly. Making sure each team member knows what their role is and how their role is best completed is actually a lot harder than it seems, especially if you have quite a lot of stylists in the salon.  This article will give you some tips to making sure you encourage communication within the salon.  

Tricks to streamline communication  

There are a lot of little jobs that need to be done throughout the day in the salon, from cleaning to stocktaking. Good communication within the team will not only ensure that everything gets done, but can help everyone divide up the work into manageable chunks – as the saying goes, many hands make light work. If only one of your team members takes the initiative to clean the salon or to check the stock and order in new products, it will become hard for them to get everything done 

Here are a few ideas to help you to streamline team communications in your salon: 

• Create clear policies and rules for staff to follow that are accessible to everyone. This means you won’t end up repeating the same thing multiple times. Ask your staff to refer to the guidelines first and only come to you if they are unclear.  
• Automate schedule changes and cancellation updates so they can’t be forgotten in the bustle. Double booking or having people turn up for appointments that aren’t on the system can become an issue over time.  
• Keep your team updated about any issues or changes so that they can provide input and suggestions.  
• Ensure there are always channels of communication open for you to get in touch. If a team member is sick, for example, sending a message on a group chat asking if anyone can cover their clients is a lot more effective than messaging everyone individually.  

Have an open door policy  

In order to solve day to day issues such as younger stylists who have questions on how to best make sure a haircut in a specific style goes well, setting up a mentor system between junior stylists and more experienced staff can be a good way to ensure small issues on the salon floor get resolved quickly and without trial and error. But some larger issues, such as the schedule system breaking or there being a double booking, may still need you to step in and resolve them.  

Having an open door policy means being open to discussions about issues or changes that may need to be made day to day. This can make dealing with potential issues before they become problems much easier to manage. It encourages transparency about any problems and can foster better communication with the team as a whole, as they see that they can discuss improvements and other changes they want to see in the salon.  

Team meetings  

Having weekly or monthly meetings is key to ensuring everyone in the salon stays on track with work and knows what the focus is in the weeks ahead. Having a focused team meeting can allow you to communicate any issues that are ongoing within the salon, as well as any positive changes you have noticed over time.  

Consider when you are arranging your team meeting and how it will affect the mood in the room. Setting up a team meeting on a Friday afternoon, for example, will feel more relaxed as the week is essentially finished and your stylists can head out to the local pub before heading home for a chat. In contrast a Monday morning meeting is likely to be far more focused and efficient rather than a team bonding experience. As a salon owner it can be hard to strike a balance between acting as your team’s boss and being a friend. It takes good communication skills to create a balance that you and your team are comfortable with.  

Use salon software  

To foster better communication setting up a team group chat can be a fantastic way to send quick questions and messages and receive a reply. SalonIQ has a range of great ways to improve team communication that you can use to ensure your salon creates a far more open and communicative environment going forward. Here are a few key ways to do so:  

• Hub App – The Hub app can be used by the stylists to check their schedule for the day, how well their KPI’s are doing as well as adding in bookings if they need to. Having a handy and mobile way to check appointments quickly will help team members prepare for clients in advance and ensure any schedule changes are communicated quickly.  
• Push Communications – This system sends each team member an automated breakdown of their performance over the last day, week or month. This can help each individual stylist find key areas they need to improve and what they are already doing well.  
• Holiday tracking – Using this scheduling system means it is easy for team members to log their days absent and annual leave in the system. It also makes it easier to monitor when a good time is to go; for example if a stylist will be gone for two weeks it will be better for the other team members to wait until they get back to book in their own holiday, so they don’t lose too many team members at the same time.  

Recruiting a dream team  

A big part of fostering good communications in your salon is by recruiting enthusiastic team members who are able to communicate well with their colleagues and clients. A big part of being a stylist is putting your clients at ease and discussing what they want their hair to look like, so many professional stylists are natural good communicators.  

However, in order to make sure team communication isn’t impacted by new stylists joining the team, streamlining the recruitment and integration process for you and your new employees can help them settle in faster.  

If you are interested in using the SalonIQ software to foster good communication in your salon, then please contact us here. Our software has many applications that will help your team set up easy to use schedules and communicate changes quickly and easily.  

Back to blog