Boost Your Team's Performance: Appraisal Season in Your Salon Business

Small can be beautiful, but there comes a point in lots of salon owners' journeys where they just can't scale unless they bring on a team. And of course, a team means performance management. How do we get started? Why do we do it? And why is it so damn frustrating? Let's find out. Hello, hello, hello, my salon lovelies. How on earth are you? Are you looking good and feeling gorgeous? I certainly hope so. As we steam towards February, my goodness, January went in the blink of an eye, didn't it? Despite the British weather's best efforts to make us all bloody miserable. How's it been for you? Not an easy start for a lot of people's years, and I think that's coming off the back of quite a tricky November and December, so I'm afraid I'm seeing some people closing down. Luckily, nobody in my group, but I have heard lots of stories of people having lots of empty shops around them, so slightly scary times for lots of people in our industry. Does that reflect your reality? What's going on with you? Reach out, let me know. You know I love hearing about how you're doing. Phil at buildyoursalon.com. I would love to hear from you very soon. Myself, it's been a funny old month. I've been jumping back onto webinars since Christmas, so you might have seen my ads popping up in your Instagram and Facebook feeds, and it's been really lovely, actually. I have to say, I'd not done webinars for quite a long time, and masterclasses and online lessons in that kind of way, and it's been an absolute joy. It's been like putting an old pair of slippers back on, and I've really enjoyed connecting and hearing what's going on in real time with what's going on in lots of people's salons. But what are we talking about today? Well, January for a lot of people is when we start focusing on performance management for our teams, because January traditionally is appraisal season. So do you have a team? Are you carrying out appraisals? And how are you finding that? The reason I want to do this podcast is I did a small piece of research, and do bear in mind that I'm talking to a few people when I put this research together. It's not an industry-wide thing, but I do have a very broad spectrum of salon owners that I can draw on. And when I spoke to them, there were an alarmingly small number that were doing appraisals at all, an even smaller number who were doing weekly or monthly one-to-ones with each team member. But the bit that concerned me the most was 89% of the people I spoke to felt like those meetings and appraisals made no difference at all.

And that is scary to me, because that's a massive waste of time. So can Uncle Phil help you on your way to better performance? Why do we bother with performance management if it's such a waste of time to have these meetings? What's in it for us? Well, of course, the first thing is that we're more likely to hit your goals, and particularly your financial goals, if we can get to grips with performance management. Because when they do well, you do well. Or at least if you've connected, and this is one of the things that people get wrong, if you've connected your salon goal to your team members' goals, then when they do well, you do well. If there's a disconnection there, and I see that an awful lot when I go into salons, and I speak to the owner, and they have a very clear target and a clear idea about what they want their salons to achieve, then when we add up everybody's individual targets, there's a bloody shortfall. So we're coaching the team to a certain target that isn't actually going to fulfill what the salon needs at all. Of course, it's also a lot more fun, and take it from one who knows, and I've seen both sides of this coin, it's a lot more fun to be managing a team that's actually performing at a high level. To be honest with you, trying to manage a team that's not performing well is really hard work, and that's when we kind of get those Monday morning feelings, except it's every bloody day of the week. And when we really have to drag ourselves into work, because we do feel like we're pushing a rock uphill, when we start to get some traction, when we start to see an improvement in some results, things actually as managers become a lot more enjoyable for us. So they're the two big reasons that I have. There's a money reason, and there's a personal reason why I think performance management is vital. And to be honest with you, do they not deserve a manager that wants them to reach their potential? Do they not deserve that? Are you not being the manager they deserve by actually taking their performance seriously and dedicating your time to their performance? I think so. So having said that, what does performance management look like? Here's a kind of overview, if you like, and I'm borrowing very heavily from my Salon Accelerator program.

So you can kind of think of this episode as sponsored, if you like, by Salon Accelerator. And Salon Accelerator is my six-month Salon Transformation Programme. It's for salons that are striving for financial figures between $100,000 and $500,000. So it's people that are looking to scale. Because when we get to a certain level, it's almost impossible to scale without systems. We need some stuff in place. So Salon Accelerator is my way to help you get systems in place. There's a module on team. There's a module on marketing and PR and all sorts of wonderful things. So if that feels like something that could be useful to you, you want to head over to the buildyoursalon.com website for all the details of Salon Accelerator. But we're taking lots of content from the seven-star team module inside Salon Accelerator. So what does performance management look like? Well, essentially, there's three main elements to performance management. The first, and I've already mentioned this, is our annual appraisal. Now, the problem with annual appraisals is there's only one a year. And what tends to happen, or in my experience, is there's a big flurry of excitement and motivation and lots of movement in the business after an appraisal. And then that starts to decline all the way through the year, right up to about November time, when I realise and the team member realises that we've got another annual appraisal coming up. And then there's a mad flurry of activity at the end of the year where we try and tick off some of the things that we said we were going to do. So to break that up is element number two. So I would encourage you, if all you're doing is an annual appraisal, bring in a mid-year review. It's your opportunity to just figure out whether we've got to the stage that we said we were going to. And what it does is it reduces that decline. So motivation still starts to ebb away a little bit after an appraisal. And then halfway through the year, we bring that motivation back up and just ask those questions. Are we set where we said we were going to be? What do we need to do to get back on track to make sure that we tick all the boxes? It's a much shorter meeting, but the format of those two meetings is exactly the same. Firstly, we're reviewing progress so far. In the annual appraisal, we're looking at the last year. In the mid-year review, we're looking at the last six months. Then we're setting clear targets for the next stage. So in an annual appraisal, we're setting targets for the next 12 months. In a mid-year review, we're setting targets for the next six. And then the last question is always, what help do you need from me to make sure we achieve at that level?

Do you need more training? Do you need more product knowledge? Do we need to look at external training? Do you need coaching? Do you need role play? What do you need to make sure that we hit those numbers? And essentially, what we're doing is empowering the team member to get them to tell us what help they need. We're getting their buy-in to the plan that we're putting together. And then the final element is our much more frequent one-to-one meetings. And if you're doing no performance management at all, and you don't like the idea or haven't got the time, well, I would find the time. But if you don't feel you've got the time to put an annual appraisal together, do this bit, okay? Do the frequent one-to-ones. This is where the biggest wins are. Just sitting down on a one-to-one basis with every team member and just talking to them about their progress over a short term. Setting a short-term goal and coaching them to a result. This is where the big money can be. And honestly, we've implemented this program into salons and seen huge transformations really very quickly. But it does rely on consistency. So the first thing I would do is book these one-to-one meetings in your column and their column as far ahead as you dare, to be honest with you. And those meetings are sacred. They don't get moved for even your very best clients because you need to communicate the importance of that meeting to your team member. You don't need very long. I would book out 15 minutes. And normally, my one-to-ones are done in less than 10 minutes because they're very, very focused. And they're also very factual. We're not particularly interested in how you're doing, how you're feeling. It's not a full appraisal where we're going through an enormous amount of data. We're just looking at a very short time period. As far as frequency goes, well, it kind of depends. So if you've got somebody who's ticking all the boxes and hitting all their measures, I would meet with them once a month just to report back on their progress over the last month and make sure they've got the support and help they need to achieve this month. If you try and meet more frequently with somebody who's already ticking the boxes, you're micromanaging, you're getting in the way, that time would actually be better spent with them in the column doing a brilliant job, which they are already. If you have people not hitting measures, they're not quite achieving targets, then we increase the frequency of those one-to-ones.

So we go down to fortnightly or weekly, depending on how far away they are from targets or whether they're missing more than one measure. So I hope that's been useful to you. And the structure of that meeting is exactly the same. How did you do last week? What do you need to achieve this week? What support do you need from me to make sure that happens? So the same structure, shorter time period. Now, the question I always get is, what do I measure? Very quickly. In fact, we could do a whole episode on this. Somebody make a note. And in fact, if this would be a useful episode, reach out and let me know, phil at buildyoursalon.com. So the measures are that we look at the amount they're taking in service. We're taking the amount that they make in retail sales. We're taking their retention or rebooking rate. And there's a reason why I give you the choice. But essentially, I think they tell the same story in the end. And then finally, we're looking at their utilisation. So how much of their available hours are taken up with money generating activity? That's a bit of a whirlwind. I feel like we have another episode coming up just to focus on those four measures. So has that been useful to you? Has that inspired you to jump in front of your team members and start egging them on and coaching them and helping them to better results? I certainly hope so. If there's a topic you'd like me to cover in a Build Your Salon podcast episode, reach out. Let me know, phil at buildyoursalon.com. If you want help with Salon Accelerator, head over to the website or you can email me again. We've got a guest episode next week. If there's someone that you would like to hear me interview, then why not reach out and let me know that as well? We had some brilliant feedback on the interviews that I've done so far. Last week's episode with Chris Moody went down particularly well talking about Salon education. I do have a few episodes banked, so I've got the next three interviews already recorded and edited and good to go. But after that, who do you want to hear from? Who do you think I should be talking to? And don't just think about people that are operating in the Salon world. I would love to interview some people who have some wisdom they can bring to us. Because I'm always a big fan of ideas coming from outside the industry. So I hope that's been useful. I hope you're having an amazing day. And I hope you're looking forward to a fabulous February too. You gorgeous, wonderful person, you. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons.

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