Power to your people

Tips from people-friendly salons

STUART PHILLIPS
In May 1995, I decided to open my salon in Covent Garden. Although I’d been a hairdresser for a long time, I soon realised I had to learn quickly how to manage and motivate my staff. Thankfully, 
I still have many of my original team with me and I believe 
I owe this, as well as the salon’s success, to my appraisal and motivation techniques.

Motivating and appraising is a two-way process. First, decide what it is you are looking for. Then you need to discover what your staff members want too. A great way to find out is 
to simply ask them! Put into place well-run team meetings, suggestion schemes, staff surveys and opinion polls. When done properly, it can be fun for everyone.

The other key point is to make sure you manage your managers 
– they are in a position to influence the motivation levels of the people they manage. Managers can make the difference between success and failure, happiness and drudgery – but they need the skills to manage effectively. They should receive feedback from their boss, peers and team, whether it’s stylists, juniors or clients.

Last but not least, celebrate your staff’s success! We learn from our mistakes, true enough, but we can learn just as much from our success if we take time to do so. Celebrate every success and learn from it.

The best teams in the world always pat themselves and each other on the back, and shout about it when they achieve a good thing!