For those of you who have been in the spa industry for a long time, you know "The Old Way" of hiring. The owner spent a lot of time recruiting and hiring and then training consisted of an orientation of facility and a demonstration of a few treatments - then the new recruit was on their own.

But here’s what really happened…

Because the spa employee training was not very in-depth the spa owner started receiving complaints from customers or staff retention became a problem. At that point, owners start wondering what the heck happened - and often putting the blame on the new hire, believing the problem is solely with the team member.

Wrong.

Hear me now - hiring is a slow (but powerful) growth initiative.

The real problem was that spa owners did not set the new hire up for success. Hiring a team should never be a fast decision. It needs be well thought out in terms of both time and finances. 

I want to make sure that you are managing your own expectations when recruiting & hiring new team members. It takes time for new team members to get rolling, get up to par with their spa protocols and build their clientele. Expect this to take a good solid year for that to happen. If it happens faster, great! But it’s critical to manage your spa leadership expectations when it comes to hiring.

Three Reasons Why You Need A Training And Ongoing Coaching Program

1. You need a repeatable, consistent guest experience to stay in business. The whole reason you hang your door sign out every morning is to give a spa experience to the people in your community. If their visits to your spa are not consistent, then you have a problem. You see, if a client has a negative experience at the spa, rather than complain to the owner they will usually just not come back.

   *Even if you already have a team, if you are seeing problems with consistency in the guest experience, it is not too late to go back and re-train.

2.  It sets your team up for success. It’s very frustrating for a new hire to come into a spa that does not have a good training system. This is especially frustrating for a hire who is talented and expects your spa to be set up correctly.

   If you want your team to achieve sales goals or have a certain amount of clientele, you need a systematic and in-depth spa training program that walks staff through all spa protocols and includes a testing process to prove they understand what’s required of their position.

3.  It ensures the whole team is working congruently towards the same business outcomes. This means all spa staff are working together towards things like profitability and client retention. If you haven't set your team up for success with proper training, then these business outcomes will be inconsistent.

Think about it, if you are training each person on your team just a little differently each time you hire, or there are areas in the training that could be open for interpretation you could have each person on your team bringing "their own way of doing things" into the protocol. This can totally tank your business outcomes.

Ongoing Coaching

Ongoing coaching is another area that is important to bring into your spa business. Jim Collins wrote a fantastic book called Good To Great where he talks about something called The Flywheel Concept.

The flywheel is a heavy weighted wheel, and it takes a lot of effort to get it going but once it’s moving freely, smoothly & quickly, all you need is just a little push to keep it going. Ongoing coaching is that little push on the flywheel that keeps your business running smoothly.

There are many ways you can include ongoing coaching with your spa team.

• One-on-one coaching with a team member if they are not meeting expectations.

• Monthly one-on-one coaching to talk about goal setting, strategies and support to increase their sales and includes follow up on how they are doing with what you talked about.

• Daily huddle – These are quick little staff meetings at the beginning of the day. They are very focused meeting, where you know exactly what topics you want to discuss with staff. The key words here are SHORT, SWEET & ORGANIZED.

Ongoing Coaching can be a very positive experience that can help your team members to feel supported and valued and an experience that both of you can look forward to.

If you are starting to think about setting up a spa team, I really want you to make sure you are giving yourself enough time to make a training and ongoing coaching program. If you have more than one department in your spa, (eg, Reception/Guest Services & Esthetics) you will need to have training programs for each of these positions.

I know it can be really overwhelming trying to take all of the information for your training system out of your head and on to paper. Most spa owners I work with who go through this training program development process quickly realize how many gaps there actually are in their system.

If your training and ongoing coaching system is non-existant or a hot mess and you are feeling overwhelmed, reach out to me, and we can chat about how I can help you.