In charge of a beauty salon: how to build relationships with your employees

"A beauty offer" is formed mostly by small salons, sometimes chains, so corporate culture is not a matter of discussion, but the relatioship between heads and specialists is.

One of the major problems in beauty-related dealings is cronyism, when there's no distinguish between friendship and work. It puts the whole firm at risk, carrying lack of discipline and a decline in quality.

Usually, it is in directors' responsibilities and power to establish the way employees interact with each other. It is not a formal rule, those in charge should pay close attention, guess moods, most importantly, give their own positive example. Running a salon, your relationships with the team are always in full view of everybody. Your manner is a silent pattern, and the smaller your team is, the greater such influence will be.

Finding the balance between strict corporate discipline and fellowship rules of conduct and accepting it as a norm is as necessary as observing other regulations in the sphere. You are in charge - make sure it's done. There's nothing criminal in being a friendly and easy-going boss if some boundaries are respected. The reasonable scale of politeness and understanding at work should be unquestionable.

Do not assume that harshness brings a lot of good either. It may simply turn the employees on you. Tore up boss is a tempting topic for rumors which may consequently affect your reputation and services quality.

To work out a rational behavior, try to convey the right message to the team: the director is in charge of the whole business, and being an owner doesn't make him free from completing the plan, taking care of every little thing, be it technical, economic or legal matter. That's why informality at work is so dangerous for salon's functioning.

Losing the balance, you get into a trap

Take, for example, hunkers who avoid changes when a business live on them. It is unlikely that the voices of reforms opposition will be stifled whereas it's not that hard to aggravate the dispute. As long as a relationship has turned the line of informality, they will push it with courtesy, gone formal too far - with rudeness.

Sometimes it appears difficult to make someone do their job. We go the same scenario. Personal problems, urgent matters…anything to be left alone. Or they might be extremely negligent and slow - to get you do this eventually.

Сreate new rules of conduct and deliver this info to the staff: organize a gathering, let everyone to look at the list and then sign the document stating they have acquainted themselves with the changes. This way, you reach an official agreement with the employees as well as make sure they promise to obey to the norms.

Regular meetings (at least once in a month), by the way, is a good habit for a company. One of the very nice ways to show that the director cares, is to set a convenient date and time of a gathering and during the meeting, spend time at both monitoring the working process and praising hard-working and the most active members of the team. It is important to illustrate how positive and negative inside sanctions influence the business in general. And this motivates a lot.

It goes without saying, the best tactics is impartiality and mutual respect.

Colleagues often hang out after work, this is alright. And while nights at the bar are usually for those of the same department, birthday and good office parties are real challenges. In such situations, the best idea is to be mildly friendly. Make a short speech, congratulate guests of honor and slip away before the whole thing is over with a friendly goodbye. In your list of "friendly things", include one little friendly reminder that the following day you're awaiting everyone at work on time and hoping to see the room cleaned.

What you shouldn't do is to stay too late and drink too much. Better not to give your team a chance to see you boozed.

Another important point is your behavior with a kingmaker. Almost every team has a person they trust. So the underlying danger is that they may turn people against you. Beware of that scenario and try to build a healthy relationship with them. It can be really hard to fire a widely respected beauty specialist simply because of some corporate disputes or his negative impact on others.

Our traditional last but not least: never share detail of your personal life with your employees. Your private life may eventually become public property and breaking news.

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