Maintaining Performance Standards in Your Salon

When it comes to gaining your clients trust, maintaining your salon’s performance standards are crucial. This article will discuss some tips for you to use to maintain a high performance standard within your salon

Performance standards can be hard to measure in a salon, especially if you as the owner are not working on the salon floor. The easiest way to measure your team’s performance is often through digital reviews of your team and their rebooking rate, but even this may not give you the whole picture. Using your salon software to keep track of your KPI’s can give you an idea of how your salon standards are being maintained. Your salon software can record all your data and help you to track your progress. If there are any drops in productivity or performance standards this should be reflected in your Key Performance Indicators and you will be able to resolve the issue. 

In order to prevent any drops in performance standard in your salon, creating a set of salon rules can keep your salon standards high and give your team a guideline of what is expected from them. To maintain high standards further, you can give regular demonstrations about the proper procedure for client’s treatments and create a salon client journey to highlight what the procedure is at each junction.

Code of conduct

In order to maintain a high standard for your team, set your performance and brand standards early by creating a code of conduct and letting your team know the level of work that is expected from the team. Of course, if you have trainees in your salon they cannot be expected to create the same standard of work as a seasoned professional. To solve this issue, you can arrange a mentorship scheme within the salon by pairing less experienced stylists with team members with a high technical proficiency and a lot of experience. This means that if your less experienced team members have a problem there is a first port of call to solve it. They can also step in and help if a client asks for a treatment they are not practiced at.

There are other ways to create a high working standard within the salon that can be included within the code of conduct. Here are a few examples:

• Create a uniform for your stylists to help make your team look more cohesive. This doesn’t need to be extreme, such as creating a specific outfit to wear. Creating aprons with the salon brand logo on the front and asking your stylists to wear black while working will allow them freedom to use their own clothes while still making them look more professional.
• Set out the client journey on a poster in the staff room to remind your team of your welcome policy to make your clients feel at home in your salon. You can use your salon software for many steps in the client journey, such as reminders of the appointment sent through SMS.
• No matter how wonderful your salon is, it is incredibly difficult to please every client. Inevitably, you will get a complaint from one of your clients. Having a set of procedures in place to deal with a complaint can make the experience less stressful for your team and can help you resolve the issue quickly.
• Set up regular team meetings to explain any new events and changes in the salon procedure. Regular 121 meeting to discuss your stylists progress can also help to ensure that your team can have any issues resolved and help to motivate them to stay on target.
• Creating a set of salon guidelines is similar to the code of conduct, but is less focused on concrete rules and more on your salon culture. Salon guidelines are intended to list the salons core values and what you as the salon owner want the business to look like in the future. Fun rules such as smile through rain and shine can be a nice way too keep the team enthusiastic.

Communication

Organising team meetings at least once a week to discuss progress in the salon and any events coming up is a great way to help your team feel invested in the salon. If you make unilateral decisions without consulting your team, you can miss out on some fantastic insights that they may have. Ask for ideas for upcoming holidays, such as wearing Halloween costumes during the holiday or elf hats for Christmas, this can be a fun way to engage with clients and your team members.

When it comes to performance standards in the salon, if you are having a team meeting it is well worth asking your team what they think has gone well that week and what might need to be improved. Organise 121 meetings for you and your stylists to talk about their personal development and if there is anything they want to improve or learn about. To help your team to feel invested in your salons progress, using team monitoring salon software can help them to pinpoint areas for improvement and see where they have done well. This can help your team see how they are getting closer to an end goal a bit of extra effort at a time.

Training

Have regular team training days when you are introducing a new dye or treatment into the salon so they can discuss it and participate. Asking more experienced members of the team to share their knowledge will help less experienced stylists improve and help the salon as a whole. In order to keep your salons performance standards high, it is crucial to ensure your teams skills in the field improve over time. Whether your stylists gained their skills through an apprenticeship or another qualification there is always more to learn!

Where do your stylists want to be in a year or ten years? Helping your stylists find the time for more salon training to get the next level of NVQ, if that is the course they are doing or helping any apprentices in the salon develop their professional skills can create an exciting and evolving work environment where your team members will bring back new skills and experiences to help improve the salon.

To enhance your salon’s performance, having a team competition can be a fantastic way to motivate each of your team members. Competitions such as best haircut, judged by taking before and after pictures of clients (after asking permission) to see their hair transformation or tidiest hair station can add a bit of excitement into your day. The winning pictures can be uploaded to the salon’s social media accounts weekly or monthly depending on how often you post.

If you are interested in using our Salon software to help maintain your salons performance standards, then please contact us here. Our dedicated staff will be happy to explain what our software can do for you.

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