Creating A Fantastic Salon Culture

Creating a good salon culture is a vital way to ensure that your stylists and clients are happy with the atmosphere in your salon. Ensuring your staff remain positive and enthusiastic in their work can make a world of difference when it comes to client satisfaction.

When you are just starting out with a new salon, you will probably have a very strong idea of how you would want your business to turn out. While the services you offer and the décor are important ways to differentiate your salon, making sure you work on creating a positive and happy culture in your salon is key to your long term success.

Your salon culture is a reflection of the core values and characteristics of your business. Think about what you want to achieve with your business, what your core values are and how to achieve them. Creating a set of rules and guidelines for your staff that exemplify the culture you intend to encourage, will help you to ensure your salons culture ensures your staff enjoy working in your salon.

Key ways to create a positive culture can include practices such as putting in place team meetings to share ideas once a month. Making sure your staff and clients feel heard and can contribute to the salon, is key to keeping both team members and customers invested in your business.

What is salon culture?

While the concept of a salon culture may seem abstract, a lot of what it constitutes is the behaviour that is encouraged in your staff members and whether the salon is an enjoyable place to work. Do all your staff get along? Is there a fair and easily understood cleaning schedule? Are the records of past treatments and client information well organised and taken care of? Do your employees enjoy their job at the salon?

Once a salon culture is already in place, it can be extremely hard to change it, especially if it is toxic. Having team members that are unhappy working in the salon or stylists that don’t get along sometimes just happens, but as a salon owner it is your job to try and mediate and help find solutions to these problems.

Even if your staff are having a bad day they should be able to act professionally within the salon, but if they are unhappy for a long period of time they are less likely to go above and beyond to provide an excellent service. To ensure your team are happy and have a way to discuss any issues, setting up a team meeting each week can prevent problems before they start. If you are too busy for a weekly meeting, creating a system for stylists to let you know if they are having problems or conversely if they feel things are improving can help you keep your finger on the pulse of how things are going in the salon.

Your salon team

While you will be at the helm of your business as the salon owner, your employees will also have an impact on how your salon culture evolves, so it is important to hire the right team of stylists for your salon. Here are some things to keep in mind when you are interviewing new employees or building your salon team:

• Choose the right people – When interviewing new employees, think about how they will fit into your existing team and whether they will work well together. Sometimes people don’t fit well together or have a personality clash, making sure you team members will get along will create a calmer atmosphere in the salon.
• Communicate expectations – It is important to let your team know what you expect from their performance and what you want them to focus on in their work. Having one on one meetings to discuss where your employees are succeeding and potential areas for improvement, are a good way to let your staff know what your expectations are.
• Have concrete rules to follow – Having a set of clear rules and regulations to follow is imperative to ensure your salon runs smoothly. How do you welcome a customer? What to do when a new client first visits the salon? Who to go to of a client has a complaint? Clear rules in place will ensure there are less mix ups.
• Check in with your employees – Having a monthly or even a weekly meeting can help you to gauge how well your team is doing. Discussing any potential changes, when their holidays are planned for or new equipment (such as salon software) with your team and asking for their thoughts, keeps an open dialogue that can be very helpful when building your salon culture.
• Invest in your staff – Making sure your stylists get opportunities to learn new skills and refine the ones they already have, is a key to helping your salon grow. There are online workshops and courses that can help your staff learn about a wide variety of skills, including salon software, that you can provide them the opportunity to take.

 Training

Making sure you have a detailed orientation and training week set up to integrate new members into the team is very important. If your salon has a new staff member who is new and still learning, then assigning them a direct supervisor with enough experience to help them grow is a fantastic way to foster co-operation within the salon.

Certain rules, such as good customer service are often considered to be common sense, but making sure your employees have the clients journey memorised can save you from a lot of problems later on. Small things, such as offering to take your clients coat and bag and offering a coffee while they wait for their appointment, can ensure that your salon’s customer service remains top notch and ensures that your clients are comfortable.

To create a good salon culture, it is important to maintain a balance between catering to your customers and making sure your stylists know that you have their back. If you are too focused on customer satisfaction, then your stylists may not believe that you will help them with any issues such as complaints and will be nervous of any mistakes. Conversely, if your salon culture is too focused on commercialising then your stylists may rush through clients and leave them feeling unsatisfied. Finding a balance that works for your salon and a set of rules that work will take time, but the results will be worth it.

Computer Systems

Salon software is a key ingredient in creating a good salon culture. Ensuring that relevant data is recorded and inputted into your salon software can help you to monitor your stylist’s performance.

Using your salon software to monitor salon member’s performance can help you review what they are doing well and what each stylist may need to improve. Using the collected information in team meetings to discuss the salon’s progression and how to maintain it can help you identify key areas to work on.

Salon software can be used to help your stylists keep track of customer records, their schedules and much more. Having a day long training course for all new salon members to familiarise themselves with the computer systems and salon software so they can use it effectively to help them with their work.

If you are interested in SalonIQ’s software as a solution for your salon, then please contact us here. Our friendly and professional staff will be happy to walk you through what our software can offer your business.

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