Evaluations are key to the success of your salon business. Making time to review and do evaluations of your salon staff can help you take your business to the next level. As we saw in Part 1 it is key to make the time for this to guide your team to success! Here we have the ‘How To’ of getting your staff evaluations done.
Scheduling Evaluations
Have a formalized procedure for evaluations. Scheduling should be consistent. You might determine that evaluations for different categories of team members need to occur with different frequency. For example: a new employees would be evaluated after a 1 month of a 3 month probation period, and then either every 3 or 6 months thereafter.
Tips for conducting evaluations
- Schedule the evaluation in advance so the team member knows it is coming. Do not schedule it more than two weeks ahead otherwise they could stress about it.
- Avoid cancelling or changing the day or time of the schedule evaluation whenever possible. This adds more unnecessary stress into the process.
- Provide the team member with a blank copy of the evaluation in advance of the meeting. Ask them to fill it out. This will provide you with an opportunity to compare how you think they are performing with how they see themselves performing. This is very worthwhile as it can help to uncover discrepancies in expectations.
Reward the Right Behaviours
A great way to make use of the employee evaluation data is by having the evaluations tie into compensation. Evaluations should be an important part of the daily rewards, compensation, and overall recognition strategies. It is important to make sure that the rewards are in line with actual performance and that the performance that is evaluated ties into the core company principles. For example: If pay is entirely based on individual sales performance, then there is less motivation for teamwork. Create ways to tie together results in financial and operational performance with incentives or bonuses in both cash and non-cash rewards systems.
Genuine & Sincere Praise
Some leaders employ encouragement as a manipulative device. They say what their staff want to hear in order to get them to perform as desired. Eventually, inauthentic encouragement rings hollow, as people recognize that it’s a management tactic rather than heartfelt affirmation. Over time, people learn to differentiate feel-good platitudes from actual praise.
When standards of evaluation are well-defined and known, recognition and praise can be offered in a completely genuine and sincere way.
Encourage Teamwork
One way to encourage teamwork is by instituting a policy of recognizing the entire team together for overall positive performance evaluations This will motivate the staff to encourage and support each other. For example, the team might need to achieve a minimum average ‘grade’ on evaluations, or all team members team members may be required to achieve a minimum standard in order for there to be a team reward.
Celebrate Success!
Praise and recognition should be given proportionately, with more lavish compliments, rewards, and recognition reserved for outstanding performance. It should also be given in a timely manner so that people know immediately the value of their contribution.
Your team is your most valuable asset in your spa or salon business. Make sure you value and recognize their important contributions.
Need help getting results in your salon business? Contact Salon Prophets at rob@salonprophets.com