Salon Team Meetings
Any business requires good team communications. Regular 1-2-1 appraisals and regular team meetings are an integral part of this. A weekly salon team meeting allows you you communicate important notices, review the past week and plan the week ahead. Here is a quick guide to running effective team meetings. First set the scene, and make sure your salon team are in the right frame of mind:
- Are they on time?
- Are they prepared? always come with a pen and paper…(even better, provide each of your team with a ‘team meeting note book’ so they can keep a log of all you have discussed and use it for reference in the future, much more effective than a piece of paper that gets scrumpled up and tossed into their hand bag, never to be seen again)
A few ground rules (and I’ve seen them all broken)
- No eating breakfast (don’t care what happened the night before)!
- No doing hair /makeup i.e. Be Ready for Work
- No yawning i.e. Be Awake and Alert
- No eye rolling i.e. Be Respectful and Willing to listen and learn
- No arm crossing – Be Open
Depending on what you want to cover, a standard team meeting should take no longer than 30-45 minutes. Ideally all your team should be present, if some members can not be there then it is worth writing up a team meeting summary to give the absent team members the info they have missed, this is especially used full for those team members whose ‘day off’ falls on your meeting each week. Put it on the notice board in your staff room and get them to sign it. This avoids the old adage “Well I didn’t see that one”. Use an extended team meeting if you have anew product to talk about..even better, get each team member to pick their favourite product off the shelf. When they return to their seat, ask them to swap with the person next to them and give them 5 minutes to prepare a ‘features & benefits’ of that product. Make sure your suppliers know when your team meetings are going to be held in advance, ask them to get involved..maybe a short sharp technical session, maybe a team building exercise.
Consistent, weekly team meetings play an important role in building the right salon culture.
- Use quick energisers or games to get everyone engaged
- Review Last weeks Results – praise the stars
- Focus Area
- Goals for this week
- Any other Housekeeping
A typical focus area may be one of your performance standards, for example areas could be:
- Consultations
- Hair Cleanse
- Great Goodbye
- Salon Welcome
- Home Care
- Teamwork
Top Tips:
- Video your role plays, so that you can use them for training new team members.
- Praise in public and chastise in private. Do not use the team meeting to reprimand a team member, that is best done at a separate time
- Allow other team members to get involved. by running the meeting on the focus area.
- Always end it positive.
Here are are a few ideas for some energiser games at the beginning of your meetings:
- Playing at QVC (give them a product from the shelf and they have 5 minutes to present a ‘show and tell’ to the team with the objective of selling that product to the rest of the team. Ask them to stand up at the front of the group, remember this will not ‘feel natural for them’. You are asking them to step out of their ‘comfort zone’ so make sure you help them feel ok, give support and make sure EVERY team member gives a round of applause when they finish).
- What product am I? (Stick a piece of paper to someones forehead with the name of a product on it. The stylist with this has to ask the rest of the team questions about the product in the hope they will guess what it is)
- Using the name of products to play charades
- Window shopping…split your team up ( or this can be done individually if you have a smaller team). Prepare for this by having a list of all the local salons within walking distance of yours. Ask each team to (discreetly) go and view your competitors windows. What did they like/dislike? Are they clean? What message do they give? are they enticing? When the teams return, discuss their findings and compare with your windows.
- A simple game of musical chairs can be useful to get some ‘good vibes flowing’
Other good activities for team meetings:
- Corner Day (Ask your team to stand outside and review every inch of your salon with ‘new eyes’. What are the clients seeing when they walk in? Are the ‘corners’ clean?
- Carry out a S.W.O.T. analysis on your business (Strengths, Weaknesses’, Opportunities & Threats. (Remember every answer/observation is a good one…even if you do not like what you hear!)
- Interview Passing People In my experience, the most effective way to do this is to interview passing people, or even salon clients with the same questions. At your meeting, let the team know what you have one and ask them to discuss what they think the answers will be
A new blog on Salon Games will be following shortly. If you have any suggestions on ‘energisers’ that have worked well for you and your team, please email them to me as Salon IQ is here to share your ideas…thank you in advance.
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