Salons and Snow Days

Hello, Phil Jackson here from Build Your Salon, here to bring you the tools you need to master to build the salon business you deserve, and today I thought it would be a good idea to talk to you about salons and snow days. Welcome! So today we're talking about the weather, not just because I'm British, but because here in the south of England we're having a bit of heavy weather. Now, before we go any further, I need to explain to our American and Canadian friends and our Scandinavian cousins why this is such a big deal here in the UK, and essentially it's because we don't get snow very often. In fact, there are parts of the UK, particularly here in England, where it wouldn't be unusual for us to go for two or three years without seeing a single snowflake. So when the snow comes along, it does hit us rather hard, because when you think about it, it doesn't make financial sense for businesses and local government and national government to invest lots and lots of money in preparations for snow if it doesn't happen that frequently. So this week, what's happened is a storm has come in from the east of Europe, and it's taken us by the throat. There's huge parts of our infrastructure shutting down, public transport's been affected, and lots and lots of salons have had to close their doors. And I've had a couple of phone calls from my coaching clients today asking whether they should be paying their team if they've had to close the salon through poor weather. Well, before we go any further, of course, I have to give the boring disclaimer that I'm not an employment lawyer and that you should always seek legal advice before making any decision that affects your business. But my understanding of the law, at least here in the UK, is that if you decide that the salon should remain open, but your team member feels they can't safely get to and from work, so they choose not to come into work, you have no legal obligation to pay them. By contrast, if you decide the salon should remain closed for the day, so it's not their choice whether they come to work or not, then you have to pay the team member for their time. Obviously, if they choose not to come in, they'd either be taking that as annual leave, or you could be taking that as unpaid leave, but it shouldn't cost the salon anything.

You've got a couple of decisions to make. The first is about when it's time to finally say, OK, the salon's closed. You might choose to do that because you have a low number of customers booked in. You might choose to do it because there's been a severe weather warning, so lots of people go with the Met Office's recommendations. So the Met Office will issue warnings of different colours, so you might decide when there's a yellow warning for your area, or a red warning for your area, that that's the time to finally say that the salon won't be open. Or you could draw a line in the sand with using yourself as an example, and that's what I do in my salon. So I live the furthest from my salon, so I'm much further out in the country than any of my team. If I can make it into the salon, then the salon opens. If I can't make it to work, then we close. So whatever you choose, it needs to be a consistent measure so that your team know where they stand. The second thing you need to choose is whether you're going to market your way through it, and that's what we did today. So we had lots of people cancelling appointments, though the salon was actually open today. Had lots of people calling up because they were concerned about getting in safely. So what we did was put a promotion out on Facebook, offering a small discount, a snow day special. They had to call as close to 9 o'clock as they could, and we had a limited number of slots where they could get the discount. And we're running today on a fully booked day, which is a fantastic result, considering we've got the weather to contend with. So a snow day is an opportunity. Just because people can't get into work, doesn't necessarily mean they can't get into you. Particularly if your salon is easier to get to than their place of work, or if they've been allowed to work from home for the day. So you might choose to open the salon and market your way through it. The third decision, though, is you have to decide what to do with your team if they do make it into work, but they're not busy. So my big two are spring cleaning and training. So if you've got lots of people standing around with not much to do, that's the time to get all the cupboards open and clean down the shelves and rearrange all the products and give the place a really good spruce up. Once you've done that, then it's time to look at training and upskilling your team in that time. I suspect at some stage of the day, though, you're finally going to make the decision that people could probably go home early. If you haven't got clients, you haven't been able to market your way through it, then you may as well send them on their way. Now, the reason I don't recommend that salons do more than they are legally obliged to in this case is not because I'm a horrible person.

It's because I worry that what you're doing is sending a signal to your team. You're setting a precedent for how you are going to be reacting in the future. So if you have told your team not to come into work today, that we're going to have a snow day and we're going to close the salon, but they will be paid, and then the weather is very bad again tomorrow, it's quite a tricky conversation to explain to them why you're going to be closing the salon again tomorrow, but they're not going to be paid. Now, you may decide that for a couple of days that's going to be okay. And actually on Saturday, the weather's going to be warming up and hopefully we're going to be having a bit of a thaw. But if the storm had gone on for a week or a fortnight, would your team have then been expecting to be paid every day that you were closed for two weeks? Now, that can get really expensive for your salon and actually affect your profitability very, very quickly. Even if you're not setting a precedent, I think perhaps a more accurate word is that you're setting an expectation for your team. So I think this is one of the instances where we do as little as possible, protect the finances of the salon, and use your common sense around whether the salon should be open or not. I hope that's been helpful to you. I will speak to you again next week. In the meantime, take care and stay warm.