All About Hair

235: Building a High-Performing Salon Staff with Proven Training

• Danise Keilitz • Season 4 • Episode 235

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What if you could dramatically elevate your salon's reputation and attract fresh talent straight from beauty schools with a few strategic changes? Tune in to today's episode of "All About Hair" where we uncover the transformative power of skill certification programs in hair salons. We kick things off by exploring the three crucial training categories: technical, professional, and personal. Mastering these areas will not only improve your salon’s service quality but also help you build a team that aligns with your salon culture and goals.

Technical training is the backbone of any successful salon. We dive deep into why impeccable hair services, robust product knowledge, and effective client consultations are non-negotiable. We’ll share practical guidance on mastering foundational haircuts, creating instructional videos, and organizing hands-on training sessions. Additionally, we'll discuss the logistics of scheduling consistent training, the pros and cons of compensating stylists for mandatory classes, and the essentials of ensuring that even new stylists meet basic skill requirements. For those looking for structured training programs, we've got some excellent resources lined up.

Implementing a comprehensive skill certification program is the next big step. We combine hands-on experience with written assessments to make sure everyone in your salon speaks the same language. Whether it's mastering techniques like perming or showcasing skills through fashion shows, repetition and practice are key. We also dive into the importance of involving seasoned stylists in the training process to pass on their expertise. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a blueprint for fostering a culture of excellence that not only boosts your staff’s skills but also elevates your salon’s standing in the industry. Don't forget to share this episode on your Instagram stories and leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help others find the show.

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Speaker 1:

Today we're going to talk about skills certification programs in your hair salon, and there's usually three main categories technical, professional and personal. The technical training covers the money-making skills, like you know, doing the hair services, selling the products and nailing those consultations. The professional behavior training, which is the soft skills, is more like understanding the salon's goals and vision and things like how do you meet your retail goals, why are they important, good manners, making decisions, handling any challenges in the salon that might come up and how does your salon handle them. You know anything that keeps the clients happy. And then your personal skills are all about relationships. It's how to relate and interact with your coworkers, how to stick with the salon's culture, how to lead projects if need be, and basically, the overall mission and the vision of your salon.

Speaker 1:

Today's podcast is about setting up your skill certification program in your salon. If this is something that you've been thinking about, keep listening. Welcome to All About Hair, the go-to podcast for stylists, salon owners and anyone passionate about hairstyling. Whether you're a seasoned stylist refining your skills or a curious listener looking to enhance your hair knowledge, we've got you covered. I'm your host, denise Kylitz, a former stylist and salon owner with four award-winning salons under my belt, with over 30 years of experience. I've dedicated myself to helping stylists excel in foundational haircutting, color theory, client communication and more, enabling them to build six-figure careers they can be proud of. My mission is to uplift our industry by sharing valuable insights gathered along my journey. Get ready for enlightening discussions, captivating interviews and practical advice on marketing, sales and technical skills. This is the podcast all about hair. Okay, we're going to dive into the world of skill certifications in your hair salon when it comes to building your team.

Speaker 1:

I tell you what this was the game changer for me. When we started our skill certification program, word got out like wildfire. I mean the people, the students at the schools. They heard about it. They heard about how our education in our salon was like the best because, think about it, people are getting out of beauty school and they're wanting education, even if they don't admit it. That's, they only learn how to pass the state board right In beauty school.

Speaker 1:

And everything I hear these days from salon owners are how do I hire people? Where do I find people? Well, guess what? All the season's hairstylists are going booth rental or suites. So guess where you're going to have to go? You're going to have to go into the schools, you're going to have to make a presence and the only way you're going to one up the salon down the street is by having some kind of certification program in your salon. Does that make sense? And I know it sounds like a lot, especially if you're a salon owner and you're behind the chair and you're like I don't have any time to do what I have to do.

Speaker 1:

How am I going to start this certification program? It's okay, I understand we break it down in today's podcast. If you need more help on this, reach out. Just reach out to me. I'll help you and I am developing a very simple program on how to get this started for you. So today let's just talk about what it takes, how to break this down, what you might consider putting in your program. Believe me, if you really put your brain to work, you can do this, you can do this. You've got this far. You can do this. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

So the very first part of your skills certification program needs to be the technical experience. Of course, your new, new stylists have to know how to cut hair, not necessarily making robots. Okay, not everybody's going to do it the same way. Not every not every stylist cuts bangs the same way, or cuts layers the same way, or whatever, but they have to have a starting point that you can teach, or someone in your salon can teach. Okay, this isn't about you having to put in more hours or anything. Maybe. Maybe you have a seasoned stylist on your team who would like some more responsibility. Of course, you want to compensate them for that too.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about what technical training is all about, and this is your money making skills. This is what keeps your salon thriving, right From impeccable hair services to product sales, to nailing those consultations, which is huge. The consultation all stylists think they give a great consultation. All clients think they've never had a consultation, so there is some kind of miscommunication on that. We do have a podcast on nailing your consultation. Off the top of my head, I don't know what number it is. I have it here somewhere, but I'll put it in the show notes for sure, okay. So anyway, the technical expertise, part of this, this training this is the backbone of your business, and I think we can all agree on that. So this is where you're going to provide your staff with comprehensive guidance on all aspects that you want to see in your salon. This includes your techniques, product knowledge and how to connect with clients.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing you might want to consider and you might want to consider both Maybe you want to make videos for simple haircuts. When I was doing mine, I had five simple haircuts that I wanted every new stylist to master. Okay, these five haircuts got me through my whole career. Now you can build on them. I'm not saying these are the only way, but you know yourself there's only so many ways you can cut hair. It's all angles, right. But if you can master these five and five haircuts is not a lot and it doesn't seem overwhelming to brand new hairstylists, right. So if you can narrow it down to what you want to teach and give them a, a path, okay, that that takes all the guesswork out of it. So, five solid haircuts, build off of those, and then you can videotape them. So what we used to do is watch the video. Come to class, bring a model or a mannequin, but a model's preferred, a real human, and then we're going to cut the hair. This is how it worked, I guess.

Speaker 1:

First of all, you need to know, you need to decide when are you going to hold classes? Yes, we had them on, uh, I think, tuesday mornings. That was our cause. We were open, uh, seven days a week. Tuesday mornings was like our least busiest time. Your POS system should show you when your least busiest time is and so we would hold our classes every week every Tuesday morning for three hours. Now, who was required to come to these classes? Absolutely, the brand new stylist, right, the brand new stylist.

Speaker 1:

And do they get paid for attending? If you require them to be there, they have to get paid at least minimum wage. Keep that in mind. If you require them to be there for their job, they have to get paid at least minimum wage. So, yes, they will get paid for their education. But I guarantee you I know as a salon owner, you're like, really, I'm giving them this education and I have to pay them. But, yes, if you require them Now, if you don't require them to be there and it's just on there, if you just happen to be holding classes once to once a week and you suggest that they be there but it doesn't affect their job, yeah, you know, if they don't attend, they don't get fired or anything, then and you can prove that, then you know, I don't think you have to pay them if they're not required to be there, but most, most of the time, you want to require them to be there because you want them to go through your certification program. You want to make sure that they know what they're doing when they're standing behind the chair, right. First of all, when are you holding the classes? And make it consistent, do not miss it. This is imperative to their success and your success.

Speaker 1:

Decide if you're going to make videos. If you're going to make videos, are you going to record yourself cutting this hair or are you going to have one of your stylists cutting the hair? You know you do have to decide that if you're not going to do the videos, oh, just a side note, our classes that we have, we do include the videos. So when you go through our skill certification program on how to build a skill certification program and you get the templates and all that stuff, we also include the videos of the five haircuts I'm talking about. So you can always build upon that, but it's definitely a great starting point to get to. Okay, decide if you want videos, but you're for sure going to have hands-on classes, because the best way to do this is for your stylist to see you do it, and then they're going to do it so hands-on, and then you're going to go around and make sure that they're doing it right. Are they angling their fingers right, are they?

Speaker 1:

We started from the very, very, very start, like even how to palm your scissors, how to hold your comb, how to part the hair. Cause you got to remember, some of these people have gone to school during COVID. They didn't even work on a head, they didn't even work on a human being. We hired a few people that they'd never shampooed before, but they graduated beauty school. I know Now, luckily, we're all back in business and that's not happening as much, but you might hire somebody that they really don't know what they're doing. Okay, um, cause some States, you only have to do a written now, you don't have to do a practical. So think about it. They might not even know how to section the hair properly. Again, our program has videos to go through all of this. So you know, think about that. If you don't want to create it yourself, we're here to help.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so, hands-on classes, and then we'll talk about that in just a little bit. On how do you actually do a class. What does that actually look like? Okay, so let's let's talk about the next step. It's the professional behavior training, and this, I think, is even more important. I mean, they're all important right To be successful, everything's important but the professional training being a professional behind the chair that is 85% of your success. That five foot square radius is the business of doing hair. It's how you're treating the client. It's meeting your retail goals. It's educating the guest. It's displaying good manners. It's making informed decisions on when you're listening to your guest, what to where to go from there. It's understanding finances. It's how to give a price quote, basically, how to keep clients happy.

Speaker 1:

So you also want to equip your team with the skillset on how to handle challenges, because you're going to have challenges, they're going to arise and you know those guests that are just unhappy. How do you handle that gracefully and professionally? How does your salon want to handle it? Because it needs to be consistent. So let's go through that a little bit. So you, your handbook, needs to explain how to deal with challenges.

Speaker 1:

So, just in case you have people that forget what you're teaching them, it could be laid out. You know, like, um, what to do when you have an unhappy client, what to do if somebody doesn't like their hair color, you know, do you have a two week waiting period? Do you have three days? I mean everybody's different. So whatever it is in your salon, you want to make sure that every single person knows what's expected, right, cause you don't want to say, oh, you're going to treat one guest one way and another guest another way, because word will get out. You want to make sure you spell that out, and that could be part of your training.

Speaker 1:

Then we want to teach good manners. So what are good manners? What the heck am I even talking about? It's all those little things behind the chair. And here's a little thing. I'll leave a link in the show notes so you can get my PDF. It's a free PDF on 15 essential little things that every stylist needs to be doing for success behind the chair. It has nothing to do with technical skills. I mean like a handshake, a smile, how you present yourself, how you show up, smile, how you present yourself, how you show up. Go to the show notes, click the link, get that list, make it your own brand at your own. I don't care Um do with it what you may hang it up in the break room or teach to it, I don't really care, but I do know that these are essential little things, and if you want consistency in your staff, these they're simple. And if you want consistency in your staff, these they're simple. Okay, but everybody has to be on board.

Speaker 1:

In this part of the program too, you're going to also talk about retail goals. What are their retail goals and why are they even important? Did you know that retail is actually the highest profitable thing in the salon? And it just kills me to hear that people are not retailing anymore, that they're actually not even having retail products in their store. Oh my gosh, I'm a hairstylist and I know when I go somewhere spa, go get my hair done, cause hello, I still do. I come on, I have products out the woohoo under my sink, right. The last thing I need is another hair care product. But I still want them to tell me what they're using on my head. I still want them to tell me why and I actually I still want to buy something. So what makes you think that your clients don't want to? We're all consumers. We all want that magic potion.

Speaker 1:

Retail sales in the salon are so important. As a salon owner. You have to recognize that and you have to actually know your numbers and why that's important. That's the only way I could pay my staff vacation pay. I met 3% of 401k Health insurance. That's the only way I could do. It was through retail sales. Now you don't have to be the number one retail seller in the nation, but you still need to provide retail and products to your guests. Let them decide if they want to buy it. Why would you want them to go home and Google on Amazon and buy something that you don't recommend? That's terrible. That's a whole other podcast.

Speaker 1:

But your stylist need to know why that's important to you, if it's important to you, and they know need to know how to educate their guests and not sell their guests, but how to educate their guests. A hundred percent difference, okay. Then you also need to talk about the finances, their finances, the salon's finances. They got to know where all this money's going and coming, and you don't have to. You do not have to spell it every single detail, but you need to at least let them know that, hey, you're not making a million bucks on on your salon. You're here because of their livelihood, because you had this goal, because you had this vision and you, for whatever, whatever reason. We all go into business for different reasons, but they have to know you're not, you're not banking on them.

Speaker 1:

Now, as a salon owner, as a business owner, yes, you need to be making money. You're not in this for just a hobby, right? It is a business, so there's that you should be making a profit. You don't have to play small. Then, also, in this professional behavior training, you need to have some kind of career advancement and what their benchmarks are going to be. Now, our program has a whole career path template that you can use and personalize to make your own, or we can help walk you through that and look at your numbers and and help you come up with your own benchmarks. No problem, all right.

Speaker 1:

So the third set is personal skills. Now, this is how you nourish relationships and your salon culture. These are all about you know how team members get along with clients and with each other. This is where you want to talk about your core values and really spell it out to them. Your team members probably really need to be able to recite your core values. Uh, that's not going to really happen, but you need to have your core values everywhere in your salon, even for you, on your website, for your guests to see, and you need to coach to those core values.

Speaker 1:

And then this is also when you can talk about community involvement and why it's important. It is important to be part of your community. That's how you're going to grow. You want to talk about how you can get involved with business groups, mom's groups, schools, ymca's, gyms, bridal boutiques. You know this is where you can brainstorm and come up with different marketing ideas and give them empowerment to go out to these different groups and bring in clients and teach them how to do that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, those are the three different elements. So, uh, technical, professional and personal. So let's talk about the best way for your, your program to be successful. Okay, so we talked about the practical part, or the technical part, of the skill certification. It's about getting hands-on experience, like what we were talking about. By physically practicing a skill, your team reinforces what they've learned, and I would also highly suggest having a written portion of your training too, especially like when it comes to color formulation, the parts of the head.

Speaker 1:

You all want to be at least talking the same language in the salon. So, if I said a 45 degree angle. But somebody else is saying I don't know, convex layers. You might be talking about the same thing but nobody knows if you are and actually the two of you don't even know if you're talking about the same thing. So you at least have to have the same lingo in the salon, same with when you're teaching your haircut. So say, you teach a square layered haircut, well, there's a ton of different square layers haircut. People do it different ways and it might come out the same, it might not. I don't know if you're going to talk about square layers or if you're going to talk about a beveled bob or if you're going to talk about long layers or the list can go on and on in your four walls. It needs to be the same definition. That's really where you're trying to come together as a group. So those written portion of the training will help their mind think differently.

Speaker 1:

Yes, hands-on important, a hundred percent. You have to have hands-on. So, for example, like when you're teaching perming yes, perming, it is coming back Natural texture you need to know how to perm hair right. A lot of people don't want to do that anymore. But show your staff step by step how it's done on a live model. Not at all. Cover all the details, every little step, even if you think it's the most easiest common sense step. Even if you think it's the most easiest common sense step everything from sectioning the hair, placing the rods, how to wrap the perms just make sure your staff knows everything about this so they completely understand it. Make sure they're taking notes too. You you don't want them not present right With this. You can either show this yourself I like I liked to do that, but some people don't have the time nor do they want to.

Speaker 1:

You can pick a top employee, pick a seasoned employee, somebody that you know knows their stuff. We had different team members teach different things. Like we had somebody who loved to do perms and was fabulous at it, so they taught the perm class. We had people who love to do extensions or do haircutting or do hair color, so we let different again. I had a large staff. You might not have a large staff. I had a really large team, so it was wonderful. But at first when I was doing, it was me, and that's okay. You got to do what you got to do right.

Speaker 1:

During this time you want to let your staff practice the skills. Everybody can do it differently. Maybe they do it three times before you check off. Maybe you put them with a mentor or a seasoned stylist and let that seasoned stylist check it off. You need to have some kind of checklist so you can see that they've been working on it. And maybe when they have downtime because new stylists aren't always busy but you want them there in case there's a walk-in right so they can work on mannequins they can work on each other as long as there's not anybody waiting to get their hair done, or even have them bring in their friends and family warm bodies.

Speaker 1:

They need to repeat what they've been learning. And what better way to do it? With a warm body in their chair. Twofold, it gives them a real head to practice on instead of a mannequin, cause we all know mannequins are not real. I mean no, gives them a real person, actually threefold real person. You have a warm body in their chair, so your salon looks busy, busier than it really is.

Speaker 1:

Actually there's four. Third third thing is their friends and family are going to talk about your salon and how you do it differently than everybody else. And fourth, the clients that are in there already getting their hair done sees your newbie practicing, asking seasoned stylist or yourself about the skills, and they're going to ask questions. They're going to what are they doing? Oh, they're going through our certification program. Ooh, what's that? Do you see how this works? Your clients start respecting your salon a little bit more because you're different than the salon down the street, because you have a certification program Unbelievable, right, I know. I have to say it was a game changer for us that set us apart from any other salon. So much so we had a waiting list for people to get in to our salon and we ran out of chairs. That's why we opened two salons, all right, so now how do you test out of this? You can test them by role-playing, by observing, checking off hands-on demonstrations.

Speaker 1:

Some salons that I've talked to, they actually have like at the end of their certification program, they have like a I want to maybe like a fashion show. Um, where they? So if you had like five haircuts, you would do the five haircuts, but also on those haircuts you would do color, you would do makeup, you would do the styling of the outfits and everything and make it a fun, fun night. You know, maybe you have this every three months, that you have this fashion show in your salon. I don't know, we never did that, but I one of the salons I was talking to they did that and it was just a lot of fun for the whole team and for the clients because they invited their VIP clients in to watch. It was just kind of fun.

Speaker 1:

Again, talk of the town part of the community. It all circles back around. So. So then, once you finish the written and the hands-on talk of the town part of the community it all circles back around. So. So then, once you finish the written and the hands-on part of the training, it's time to set up some standards, how to measure how well they've done, and these standards, or these benchmarks, they help you make sure that everyone's on the same page and that their skills are being performed consistently.

Speaker 1:

Here's a couple of things you might want to keep in consideration. I don't know, it's all up to you. Your written test scores. They should be between 85 and 100%. If they score lower than that, then you need to reevaluate something right. The practical test you know when they're doing the haircut or the hair color or the formula, whatever perm, it needs to be pass or fail. There's no in between, but you do need to set up achievable goals, especially, again, if you've been a seasoned stylist for I don't know, like myself, 30 years, I'm going to be a lot faster than somebody just coming out of school.

Speaker 1:

So maybe, for example, the goal of perming maybe you want to consistently complete a perm wrap, like in 25 minutes, but there needs to be some kind of goals that they're working towards. Okay, like your haircut shouldn't take really shouldn't take more than a half an hour, my goodness, or 20 minutes to cut the hair. Most of it should be in the finishing, don't you agree? The finishing is really where you're going, but the haircut itself shouldn't be more involved than 20 minutes, my goodness. But that's a goal. And then, to make sure that these skills stays consistent, you might want to make sure that, especially at the beginning of their career, that they're performing a minimum per month, for example, like maybe 10 perms a month, and again, that could be on doll heads. They're not going to be doing 10 family members, so it could be just wrapping a perm, just because you know yourself. It's that muscle memory, that muscle memory the more you do it, the faster you get and the better you get.

Speaker 1:

Also, you want to keep an eye out for efficiency issues, like what if they had too many redos? This might indicate you need to review something. They might need additional training, they might need a little one-on-one coaching. They might just need to be not called out on the floor, for goodness sakes, but bring them back into the break room or into your office and just say hey, what's going on? What? What do you think this? You know that you're concerned. These are all just little pointers and things that you might come up against, right? So, and just to keep in mind.

Speaker 1:

But it's really important too to remember that your training program is going to evolve with your business. I can tell you, when we first started, our training wasn't written down, nothing, right, it was just like let's just go. And then we wrote it down. Then we had a notebook. Then we put in um, you know different education, like um, how to read face shapes and body language and and things like that.

Speaker 1:

So you know it's going to evolve, but you just have to write down what do you want your stylist to know? So you feel comfortable giving them a new guest, because the worst thing you could do is you have a brand new stylist and you have a new guest and the experience that they get with the stylist cause they're new isn't the experience that you want them to have in your salon. That happens all the time. And then then guess what your retention goes down because you've set a brand new guest, brand new to your salon, with a brand new stylist who don't no offense, but they don't know what they're doing right, they don't know your culture, they don't know what's expected of them, they don't know how to layer hair I don't know whatever it is. And then what is that impression leaving to that new guest? That your salon doesn't know what they're doing right and who's? Who's going to take blame? The owner? Yeah, the leader of the team?

Speaker 1:

If you've considered doing a certification program and you don't know where to begin, reach out to me, because this is just the beginning. These are just thoughts. This is just the beginning of the certification program in your salon. So just consider it a starting point, start thinking about it and don't worry if it's not perfect, you know, just do it. You can tweak it and refine it later.

Speaker 1:

If you need help, always, always, reach out to me. I'm here. I would love to help you with this. Thanks for listening today and until next time. Remember, when you know better, you do better. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of all about hair. Here's what I'd love for you to do next Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on your Instagram stories. Be sure to tag me at Denise Kylitz so I can see that you're listening. Sharing on your stories helps more people discover this podcast, allowing them to learn how to build their salon business more easily and faster. If you're really enjoying the show, please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave All About Hair a review. Your support helps boost the podcast and it makes it easier for others to find. All right, let's wrap this up. I'm Denise Keilitz and until next week. Remember, when you know better, you do better.

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