How to Handle Difficult Employees

An amazing salon team can be the making of your business. Equally, a tricky employee can stop your growth plans dead in their tracks. But how do we handle difficult employees? Hello, hello, hello my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of Wise Owl Wisdom. How on earth are you? Achingly well, I hope. I hope the November season is treating you well. I hope you're gearing up for a fantastic Black Friday. Lots and lots of salons, even over here in the UK, getting really into Black Friday and turning it into a very strong feature of their marketing calendar. What promos have you got going on? What have you got happening in your salon? Reach out and let me know. You know I love hearing from you anyway. So today I'm talking about how we handle difficult employees and why it's important that we don't just bury our heads in the sand. And I want to make this a regular feature of the podcast, not handling difficult employees, but supporting people that employ because I do kind of think that employers are the bastion. They're the guardians of our future industry. I think it's very hard to envisage a time when everybody can be self-employed. I think that certainly over here anyway, without that traditional mentoring, without that traditional apprenticeship model, I think it's very hard to see a future for lots of people who would want to come into the industry. Not everyone's cut out to be their own boss and not everybody should be either. That said, a difficult employee can be extremely toxic. The employee that has a negative attitude can bring down a whole team, even a very motivated team and someone who's just not getting behind your marketing or getting behind the changes that you're trying to implement in your business. It's not only toxic for other employees, but it's also really demotivating for you. And that kind of low level, passive aggressive sabotage is something that we just don't take seriously enough. And so many salon owners just bury their heads in the sand, don't do anything about it, think they kind of have to tolerate it. And my message to you here is that there are things that we can be doing to manage that situation much more effectively. There are things that we can be doing to not get into that situation in the first place. But more than anything, I want you to feel that you are in control.

Ultimately, this is your business. You're steering the destiny of the business. You're the one taking all the risks. You're the one who says how that business ought to be run. And if the tail is starting to wag the dog a little, my dears, then you're in the right place and your Uncle Phil has got your back. But what do we do when we feel that our team members are starting to take that extra level of control when they are starting to steer the ship, perhaps in a direction that we don't want? Well, the first thing I want you to do is to recruit. And I'm not suggesting that you actually have to go through with recruitment, but I want you to do some recruitment marketing. I think part of the reason that employees feel that they can take control is because they feel like they are completely invaluable, that we couldn't manage without them. And I think the way that you handle that situation as an employer feels very different if you know that you could replace that employee if you had to. So I think it will give your management style much more confidence if you know that there are applicants out there. So I want you to dust off your job advert. I want you to start posting to some of the job boards. I want you to make it clear that you have a process of continual recruitment in your salon. And let's face it, if an amazing potential candidate came along with a whole bunch of clients that were going to follow them as well, you'd find space anyway, wouldn't you? But I think it will just give you a bit more confidence in handling a difficult employee. But what do we even mean by a difficult employee? Are we talking about someone who's malicious and trying to sabotage your efforts? Well, no, I don't think we are all the time. I think essentially what we've got in that situation is an employee who's lacking motivation. And I think there's a lot to be gained by starting to look at some of the reasons why that might be. Where did things start to go wrong? They weren't always that way. Otherwise, you wouldn't have given them a job in the first place, one hopes. So where did things start to go awry? When did they start to lose their mojo? When did they start to fall out of love with working for you? And I think it's OK. And strategy number one is to have open communication with that employee. Sometimes they don't realize the impact of their behavior. They don't realize the impact of that demotivation on you as the owner and on the rest of the team as their colleagues. So have an open conversation. Just say, you know, off the record, I really do feel that you've lost your mojo recently.

I'm starting to see some negativity. You haven't got behind the last couple of promos that we've done. And I've noticed that your results are slipping, too. What's going on with you? What can I do? How can I help bring that mojo back, bring that spark back to your career, bring your enjoyment back to your day to day work? Sometimes just noticing is enough. But of course, sometimes it isn't. And I think the next way to deal with that is to get really clear about our expectations. I don't think we're very good at spelling out our expectations as employers. And I don't think we're very good at spelling it out early enough in the process. So I would want, for example, my performance targets to be in my job description. When someone starts working for me, I don't want it to be a surprise that we're going to be having weekly meetings. I don't want it to be a surprise that they have a retail target that I fully expect them to be hitting. I want those expectations to be really clear before you've pressed send on your CV. I want you to know that those things are going to be in place when you become an employee of mine. And then I'm going to be reinforcing those expectations through performance management. I'm going to be spelling out exactly what it is in terms of client retention, in terms of average bill, in terms of rebookings, in terms of retailing. I'm going to be spelling that out every week or every month, depending on your level of performance. So basically, there's no guesswork anymore. And I think there are an awful lot of people in our workplaces who are demotivated, not because they hate their career, not because they hate their job or hate their clients. I think it's because they don't really understand what you expect of them. They don't really understand how to do a good job. And I think it's OK for a positive attitude to be one of our expectations. And if that expectation isn't being met, well, we've got to be brave enough as employers to start to shift that conversation. So, of course, through that performance management process, our job is to coach the employee to better results. To spell out exactly what our expectation is, but to give them the tools, to give them the product knowledge, to give them the training, the devices, the mentoring in order to achieve those results. But at some stage, that conversation has to shift. If you have an expectation, for example, of a certain level of retailing that goes on in your business and you have a culture in place which supports that, of course, we start with coaching. So we start with making sure the employee has the product knowledge that they need.

We make sure that we're helping them with scripting. Perhaps we bring someone else into the room who's very good at retailing to show that employee how to open a sales conversation or how to convince a customer that now's the time to buy rather than next time they come in. Or to help pair up the customer needs with the products that we have on the shelf. But after all those things have been done, after all of that coaching, all of that mentoring, there does come a time when we say, do you know what? This isn't a knowledge problem anymore. This is maybe an attitude problem. And we've got to be brave enough to shift that conversation either in the capability direction, i.e., are you actually capable of doing this job or in the disciplinary direction, which means you're capable of doing the job, but you're just choosing not to. And finally, and most bravely, I would guess it might just be time to say goodbye. The days of somebody joining your payroll when they're straight out of school at 16 and staying working with you until they are 65 are long gone. It's not unusual for people to be replacing employees after two, three, four, five years. You'll know you'll have a gut instinct of what's right for your salon and what's true and build that into your business plans. So I always assumed that an employee will be with me for three and a half years because that was kind of the gist of what was going on in my business. And that helps on a couple of levels. Firstly, if I'm taking somebody on and I know they're going to require a certain level of training and investment, I can make an informed decision around whether they're worth the investment or not. So if it's going to take me two years to polish and refine your skills and to train you up to my standards, am I really going to recoup that investment in an extra one and a half years? Maybe, maybe not, but at least I'm going in with my eyes open. So I think it helps us judge whether somebody who's going to require a lot of training and investment is actually worth our time. But secondly, if I've assumed in my business plan that you're going to be leaving me after three and a half years and then after two and a half years you put your notice in because you're going to go and work somewhere else, it hurts a lot less. I don't feel so destabilised and demoralised. I knew you were going. It's just the timing that I got wrong this time. So I think it then encourages me to see that as something that was kind of planned for, but maybe not in the way that I'd envisaged.

And then, of course, hopefully people stay longer than three and a half years. And when they get to four years, five years, well, guess what? They're a really profitable team member as well. So build into your plans some kind of obsolescence. Build into your plans that people are not going to be with you forever. Then you won't have the rug pulled from under you. But also, after all that coaching and mentoring, sometimes we just need to have the nerve to turn around and say, this isn't working anymore. And I promise it will do less damage to your business than you think. Employees always feel that when they leave, they're going to take all of their clients with you and you're going to really feel the pain. And it might well be painful. We have very close relationships with people that we're working with day after day in any industry, but particularly an intimate industry like the hair or beauty or aesthetics industry. And once we've built those bonds, they do actually mean something to us. It's a meaningful relationship is a big part of your life. So it's going to sting when people leave and it should hurt a little bit. Surely, as a manager, as an owner, as a business leader, you don't want to get to the stage where somebody leaves and you don't give a damn. If we've got to that stage, perhaps it's time to question whether you should be in role anymore. It should hurt a little bit. It shows that you still care. That said, the sense of relief that comes when somebody leaves your employee who was not a great fit is immense. And I see team members who are causing you problems as icebergs. The problems you're seeing are just on the surface. The number of times I've managed to get rid of somebody who was causing me problems. And then afterwards I hear, oh, I'm so pleased they went, you know, they did X, Y and Z. So why didn't you bloody tell me when they were still working for me rather than waiting until after they left? But we hear all these tales of how much damage they were doing to the business. And it is real damage. Once you've got past the grief, I promise the sense of relief is going to follow as well. And also, you've got to send a signal to the rest of your team. You're the leader. You want to signal to your team that actually a level of demotivation, a level of poor performance, a level of sabotage of your business is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. And I promise your team has the expectation of you as their leader. So there we go. There's my tips on handling difficult employees. What have you encountered? I'd love to hear what's gone on with you. I've had some of my coaching clients have been through immense problems.

As far as team members are concerned. But I promise there is an end to it. And your Uncle Phil would love to hear your tale. Perhaps you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the Build Your Salon podcast and come and share your story. I'd love to get some salon owners in 2025 on some of these episodes sharing your journey through our incredible industry. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of my wise owl wisdom. And until then, take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care.