5 tips to resolve common issues with salon staff management

Your staff is the core of your business - their skills are what makes your salon truly great. You can design the most upscale-looking interior, supply the best products and have expensive equipment, but if the services aren’t provided professionally, you’ve already lost. Moreover, even the most knowledgeable expert won’t be a good addition to the team if they lack soft skills, such as a positive attitude, open-mindedness and willingness to learn. An employee that is not only great at what they do but also provides the highest quality customer experience and is easy to work with is worth their weight in gold.

This is why employee management is so important. A strong team requires a strong leader - even if they are the most friendly, laid-back and non-confrontational people on the planet, lack of organisation and coordination, as well as predetermined principles, can corrupt every work environment. If you find yourself struggling with some elements of employee management - and let’s be real, who doesn’t - this article is for you.

1. Problem: You don’t have enough time to oversee the performance of each individual employee

Managing a whole salon is no easy task, you know it well. Between stocktaking, checking financial reports and keeping track of daily appointments, it’s nearly impossible to pay enough attention to each of your employees’ performance. Even the most considerate, attentive leaders can’t clone themselves. It’s also not the best technique to be a helicopter boss, hovering around your employees at all times. So where’s the golden mean? Is it possible to take care of all your responsibilities, keep an eye on your employees’ performance and allow them to have enough creative freedom to thrive as specialists at the same time? The answer is yes - if you have the right tools.

A reliable solution for managing salons of all sizes is Booksy, the best system dedicated to improving your beauty business’s performance. When it comes to employee management features, Booksy allows you to:

Create a profile for each individual employee
Set their work schedules (that they have easy access to as well)
Generate detailed performance and work reports
Run records of leaves and absences
Calculate commissions automatically

2. Problem: You have issues keeping track of commissions

Many salons encourage their employees to boost their performance by establishing a commission-based earning system. Some decide to set different rates for every stylist, to introduce a system based on the techs’ or stylists’ seniority or to increase rates whenever some of them exceed a certain monetary amount in sales. Whichever the case, it’s difficult to keep track of what you owe to each individual employee… unless you have a system that processes the right commissions automatically.

Booksy allows you to set each team member different commission rates on services, products, gift cards, packages or memberships. You can establish a given percent or a fixed amount. You have access to your employees’ commission rates at all times, and as the software collects their whole appointment history, you can observe if the commission system works for them in practice and generate the commissions reports in a matter of seconds.

3. Problem: You think one of your employees wants to leave (copying customer contacts beforehand)

Sadly, it's quite common for techs and stylists to pack their things and leave your salon without giving you much notice. Then, they want to have a cake and eat it too - they no longer want to work for you, but want to keep your customer base. If you are using a notebook to store your customer records or software that is not secure enough, it’s easy for the dishonest, soon-to-be-ex employee to simply copy whatever information they find worthwhile. The consequences of this can be severe - you don’t only risk losing some of your clients, but also may be accused of not being GDPR-compliant. It’s your responsibility to prevent any data leaks - if you fail to do so, a client can file a complaint against you.

We treat data security very seriously. Booksy is not only stored on rigorously protected servers and fulfils high-level security requirements, but also offers you solutions to restrict access, depending on what role you set for each of your employees.

4. Problem: You suspect one of your employees may be stealing

Every case of a team member’s dishonesty feels like a personal offence. When one of them actually steals (either cash from the register or retail/backbar products), you feel crushed and betrayed. Such situations are very painful and difficult to handle - not to even mention that they're hard to notice and pin down in the first place. Usually, it begins with small sums disappearing from the register or subtle stock shrinkage. The situation may keep occurring for months before you even start being suspicious.

Our software delivers detailed financial statistics as well as those regarding stock levels. Every attempt to cheat will be noticeable.

5. Problem: Your employees’ behaviour is unacceptable

Conflicts are a natural part of our social lives and there is nothing wrong with occasional clashes of ideas - however, some people can take rivalry to a whole new level. Your employees are specialists in their fields - unfortunately, being good at what you do does not always come along with being a rational and level-headed adult. Salon conflicts can range from mild arguments to straight-on fights in front of the clients and malicious harassment of one or more members of the team. While sudden, public drama can seriously harm your salon’s reputation and damage customer experience of all clients who happened to be witnesses of the outburst, behind-the-scenes bullying can be even worse. It can go on for a long time and stay unnoticed.

Oftentimes, the unhealthy situation reflects in the given employee’s performance. Whenever you notice that any of your team members is dishonest, unfriendly or behaves suspiciously, take note of it and check their detailed work reports in Booksy. Small red flags are easy to overlook, but gathering information really helps to put two and two together. Then, be fast to address the issue and act rigorously if you have to - learn what to do when a conflict arises among your staff here.

There’s no doubt that managing staff is one of the most challenging elements of being a salon owner. It takes a lot of inner strength, rationality and calmness to be a leader that people want to follow. Your countless responsibilities make it even harder to achieve. If you want to have all data regarding your employees always at hand, easily organise work and have the commissions calculated automatically, get yourself Booksy - a new team member that will support you no matter what!