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Nurturing salon assistants
Date Added: 2009-04-30
Employing and retaining fabulous staff is crucial to a successful salon and creating a loyal team is something you have to work at. As its Managing Director, Joanna Hansford explains how London’s Jo Hansford salon nurtures and secures its salon assistants.
A great business is only as good as the people working in it and staff constantly on the move are a nightmare. There’s nothing worse than clients engaging with a stylist or colourist to find they’re no longer at the salon next time they book. And when hairdressers move on, a percentage of clients moving with them can have a devastating impact on business. Also, colour clients who tag-along with their technician invariably have their hair cut in the new salon too, so you’ve lost their business entirely.
At Jo Hansford, 75% of our team members have been with us for more than five years, resulting in our incredible 90% client retention rate. Many of our staff started with us as juniors and qualified to become senior stylists and colourists. With a development plan laid out right from the beginning, they are regularly assessed to ensure progress is as it should be.
Great assistants are vital; they’re the salon stars of the future and the heart of the business, looking after clients and maintaining our high standards. We totally support and appreciate our assistants and never take them for granted. Good ones are hard to find and once on board, you don’t want to risk losing them.
When assistants start, they are given a two-week induction plan, after which they must be able to perform the fundamentals (such as shampooing to our standards), understand our health and safety policy, recognise who is responsible for different areas of the business and know about our training procedures. To overcome a potentially nerve racking journey, they’re mentored by senior
stylists who help them feel settled and welcomed by the team.
This induction leads to assistants’ inclusion in our training schedule, which is parallel to NVQ standards, so they reach both government and our own requirements: six evenings a month they learn styling and colouring and one Monday a month for full-on training. Our colour juniors must be able to assist in styling (and vice-versa) so during the first six months, they must learn every aspect of being a junior and our expections
of them.
After six months of learning colouring and styling, they chose to concentrate on either area, moving to work in that department of the salon. We have 20 colourists and stylists and aim to have
10-12 juniors at any time, meaning our juniors assist a maximum of two people. Once placed with their seniors, we
try to not move them around for six months, so they have a proper opportunity to learn from the person they are working with, as well as getting to know their regular clients and form a relationship
with them.
This behaviour also heightens levels of customer care. Clients love to see a familiar face and it is great for them to see the same juniors on a regular basis as well as their senior technician or stylist. Our clients are very enthusiastic about our junior team members and are always interested to hear how they are progressing in their training.
Regular progress feedback and where they can expect to be in the future is really important to juniors. They need to feel just as valued as anyone else in the team and feel everything they do on the salon floor is important. Our salon manager holds meetings every Wednesday, when the training managers give them regular assessments and targets to achieve. They also have formal appraisals every six months where every aspect of their work is discussed.
Our juniors also have an opportunity to show-off what they have learnt at our annual soirée – an evening full of fun where they work a given theme to their individual style. Parents and partners are invited to the event which is held external to the salon and all the team stay to watch. Obviously nerves set in as they know they have to perform to the highest of standards!
Another way we support, encourage and help our juniors to bond with their trainers is to take them out twice a year to discuss work issues on an informal level. We find they relax so much more when out of the salon, confidently raising any worries, concerns or issues they may have, as well as celebrating the good things that are going on.In the hairdressing world, we all constantly strive to produce the best teams in our salons and encourage young people into the industry. Once we get them it is vital that they are not disillusioned and led to believe they will be sweeping up and making tea for the rest of their lives.
Your staff need to be motivated and excited by what they do and have a strong vision of their future career. With the right development programme in place they will feel valued and appreciated and the return on your investment will be vast. We have staff who started as juniors and are now the most senior members in the team, bringing in a huge amount of profit for our business. Having the right structure in place means the initial three-year investment of our time and money has reaped rewards a hundred fold.
