It’s a funny thing—managing employees can be one of the best and worst aspects of running a business. On the one hand, your staff is the frontline to customers, and employees with good personalities and solid work ethics truly can increase salon sales. On the other hand, constantly dealing with scheduling conflicts, laziness and personal-life drama can make you feel like there’s no one you can trust to help run your business. Relax—we’re here for you. The following is a guide to the basics of employee relations, from the good to the bad to the downright ugly.
The Good
Compensation. Good employees sometimes seem hard to come by, and retaining your best staff members hinges on a few factors, not the least of which is competitive compensation. To employees, salaries and hourly wages play a big role in overall job contentment because they want—and deserve—to be compensated for their hard work. Many salons offer the federal minimum wage as their standard hourly rate (currently, that’s $6.55 per hour, but will rise to $7.25 per hour in July 2009), and supplement that pay with commissions or bonuses based on sales performance. Generally, these monetary incentives are a percentage of the value of products and services sold.
Raises are another component of competitive compensation, and in a salon, promotions and merit increases are most popular because they are based on performance. With a promotion, an employee will move into a higher position within the salon—such as from salesperson to manager—and as such, he or she will be deserving of a higher pay grade. A merit increase, on the other hand, does not require an employee to be given a new job title; rather, the employee is deemed deserving of a higher wage simply because of the time and effort he or she puts into the job.
Many salon owners also offer raises that are not based on performance. Some choose to implement a pay increase after an employee has worked past a probationary or training period. Others provide consistent pay increases at regular intervals (such as annually or biannually) to compensate for the rise in cost-of-living expenses.
Motivation. Statistics indicate employees perform at average levels primarily because they are bored and unhappy at work. Translation: Employees need to feel motivated. One way to do so is to set a commission floor or implement a tiered commission system. With a commission floor, salons designate an amount they expect employees to sell. Employees tend to strive aggressively to meet—and will often exceed—the set standard. In a tiered system, the more an employee sells, the higher percentage of those sales their commission is. For example, someone who sells $500 in a month may take home 3 percent, while someone else who sells $1,000 gets 5 percent.
Salon owners have also found success with contests. These can be held on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and winners can be rewarded with perks such as baseball tickets, concert tickets or gift cards. Though they may seem like small prizes, these types of rewards can have a more personal impact than commission and make employees feel appreciated, which increases their level of job satisfaction and encourages them to continue their efforts.
The Bad
Warnings. Employees who slack off are a problem, and a pretty common one at that, given today’s work ethic. But instead of immediately letting the person go, many salon owners give employees verbal and written warnings. This provides them with specific documentation of what they are doing wrong and how they can improve.
