Dealing with staff members who run late

Running a business means you sometimes have to deal with constant staff issues and perhaps one of the most frustrating for any salon owner is the hairdresser who is constantly late with a client, Valerie Delforge. While you are left dealing with unimpressed customers who are expecting their appointment on time, you must identify if it is an issue within your salon. If it is, you need to check whether there is a pattern in this particular staff member’s behaviour. These are the 5 questions to answer:

• Is he/she talking to your client or other staff too much?
• Is it operational and, therefore, not their fault? Is the problem the flow of the client’s journey within your salon which is causing the delay?
• Is it a training that is needed? If so, what training?
• Does he/she do what they want with their clients and not care about the time? Often when someone is able to make the money, they tend to get away with it a lot more. You need to ask yourself how is that perceived within your team? And am I giving them too much power within the salon?
• Do they give their clients too much attention?

There are solutions to implement within your salon which will help this type of behaviour and here are the ways to tackle them in 10 steps:

1. Give 15 minutes extra for six weeks to every appointment so you do not pressurise your hairdresser. This will show that you are keen to support them in improving their services. It will also show the more wayward hairdresser you are in charge of the diary.
2. Calculate how this will affect their takings (in eight hours’ work, they will miss out on an average 1.5-hour treatment a day). Calculate how this then affects their commission if that is the case.
3. Have a monthly meeting with them to ensure they know you are serious
4. For the first six weeks, monitor how he/she is handling it
5. Bring models in between appointments so that stylists can practise their timing. Ensure that each model has a feedback form to fill in that will tell you about the experience they received.
6. After six weeks have a meeting regarding his/her progression.
7. Look at his/her takings and target them accordingly, you do not want to demotivate them.
8. Take the 15 minutes away unless you think they need to keep it for another six weeks. Make them understand that the aim is to ensure they do the haircut within the recommended 45 minutes.
9. Bring in more models, again ensure they have a feedback form to fill in.
10. After another 6 weeks, decide whether you want to put them on performance management or whether they have successfully achieved everything you wanted them to do.

Although we all understand that it is inevitable to have days when everything runs late, if it is a problem, it is easy to take the control back with these steps, as long as you are consistent! Valerie Delforge is founder and CEO of consultancy Delforge + Co www.delforge.co