Should You Upgrade Your Salon Structure?

One of the most unique aspects of the beauty biz is just how flexible it can be.

If you choose to pursue a career in the beauty industry, you are often presented with opportunities to forge your own path and do things your way.

It’s a benefit that not many people get to enjoy, and leveraging that freedom to the best of your ability is a must.

This principle applies to everything from your education to the trajectory of your beauty pro career. From start to finish, you have the opportunity to snip, pluck, and color your way to your dream life as a salon professional.

The structure of your salon—how it operates, the employee environment, and more—is also influenced by the route you choose.

With team-oriented salons a hot topic of discussion, you may be wondering if it’s time to switch up your salon structure and try something new.

If that’s something on your mind (or you’re hearing about it for the first time), you’ve come to the right place.

What are Team-Oriented Salons, and Should You Make the Switch?

The idea of restructuring your beauty biz to be more employee-friendly isn’t a new one, so why is it taking the beauty industry by storm right now?

The answer lies in the burgeoning popularity of team building and an enhanced focus on involving employees in the underlying structures that make your salon tick.

Outside of these idyllic philosophies and feel-good vibes, though, there are real benefits to you, the employees, and the success of your salon.

Motivational Pay Structures

If you’re a beauty pro, there’s a good chance you’re a driven, motivated hard worker. That desire to learn, develop skills, and deliver a superb experience to customers is wonderful and can carry you a long way in your career.

However, a little extra financial motivation never hurts. Team-oriented salons are embracing forward-focused pay structures that provide great external motivation in exchange for investment in the business.

Two prime examples of this approach are employee-owned shares and team-based bonuses, both of which inspire excellence by emphasizing teamwork, personal investment in the beauty biz, and a sense of accountability for everyone involved.

A Supportive Salon Setting

Every business relies on its people to flourish. If the individuals at the heart of the salon aren’t thriving, the business won’t either. That’s why team-oriented salon structures are so potent—they uplift the people behind the brand by creating a supportive setting in which to work.

Because everyone benefits when the business succeeds, an environment of healthy accountability and encouragement grows. Thanks to this lean toward teamwork and supportiveness, everyone involved can fit their role and contribute to the success of the salon while also providing their coworkers with invaluable reinforcement and reassurance.

Collaboration Amongst Coworkers

Iron sharpens iron, or so the adage goes. When it comes to the beauty biz, this principle rings truer than ever—the more you can interact and collaborate with your coworkers, the better your business will be. From pushing each other creatively to sharing new techniques to finding ways to better market the brand, collaboration is the essence of teamwork, and as we all know, that makes the dream work.

Shifting your salon structure to better resemble an employee-centric model not only greenlights collaborative work but values and encourages it. When you create an environment where employees are working toward common goals and benefit individually when the team profits as a whole, you set your coworkers and your salon up for massive success.

The Client Wins

Without clients, your beauty biz is nothing more than a distant dream. That’s why clients come first, and you want to structure your salon in such a way that their experience is elevated in every way possible. Luckily, team-based beauty businesses do exactly that.

By fostering a trusting, supportive, collaborative salon environment, you encourage your beauty pros to do what’s best for the team and the clients. This means recommending a certain stylist who may be better suited for a job instead of keeping that client for yourself. In other words, it lets each employee flex their specific strengths, and the client benefits as a result.

Additionally, multiple employees can come together to ensure a client receives the service they desire and leaves happy. This streamlines appointments (keeping clients happy) while elevating the overall quality of service being provided.

Changing the structure of your beauty biz can be intimidating, but the advantages are often worth the switch. If you’d like to learn more about being a beauty pro, be sure to check out our blog. You can also stay in the know by subscribing to Elite Beauty Society and being among the first to receive the latest beauty biz insights.