How to Build Trust & Skills With Your Employees

Is it important to build relationships and team building skills with your lash salon employees? Absolutely! Getting to know the people you share your day with will lift your mood, give you a support network, and will help you in the long run. Having a good relationship with colleagues and employees is something that will boost your business, create good client impressions, and may potentially give you friendships for life! Here are our top tips for building a team and cultivating a healthy working environment for everyone in your salon.

Set Clear Goals & Expectations

Although your relationships with your employees may be excellent, it's important to recognise that these are professional relationships. Transparency is key when conveying your expectations. Don't hesitate to communicate tasks you'd like them to undertake, such as sanitising their trolleys each evening with proper tools and professional products. Similarly, address unacceptable behaviours such as lateness, poor hygiene, inadequate customer service, or poaching clients from colleagues. Provide precise details regarding policies to minimise potential issues down the line. Clarity is paramount for effective management. Treating everyone the same will help your employees to feel equal without any favouritism. 

Look After Your Employees

While you don’t want to show favouritism to any one particular employee, there may come a time where you need to help a particular person with an emergency or perhaps even their lashing skills as they develop from one level to the next. Looking after your employees is an important aspect of being personable and approachable as a salon owner. Sometimes an employee may come with an emergency or a sick note and you will need to deal with them individually. While these examples are not showing favouritism, you are still dealing with individual people and their individual needs. You may feel stretched in different directions, one employee may need one thing, while another may need something different all while you’re looking after your business and clients.

Conversely, loyalty to you and your business can be rewarded without it being looked at as favouritism. If someone has been a member of your team for a long time, it’s likely—and advisable—that they get a few more perks than newer team members. This works on the level that the longer-serving team members know that they are appreciated, and on the level that newer team members are more likely to want to stick around to be rewarded with the perks as they progress.

Looking after your team will only mean they’ll look after your business and the people who step into your salon. The more accommodating you are, the more accommodating they’ll be for others as their issues will be resolved. Stay grounded and calm in situations where you may feel like you’re being overwhelmed – issues are temporary on the road to building a successful business.

Offer Future Development

Every person has an individual goal. Have regular meetings with your staff to understand any desires of future development or needs they may have. A Lash Tech in your salon may want to develop their skills as an artist and offer a wider range of services. They may currently specialise in Classic Lashes but could find a wider clientele by offering Volume Lashes too. Consider whether it’s worth investing in your employee – perhaps the Russian Volume Online Course can be something you sponsor and help your employee with. After all, more skills mean more business opportunities.

Other employees may have even bigger goals; eventually someone may want to step up as a leader in your salon, perhaps while you’re taking a vacation or just stepping back from management days. Having a reliable person to oversee your business when you’re not available is a huge benefit. Of course, this step up comes with a lot of responsibility and knowledge, so make sure you’re ready to take this step in promoting someone and ultimately that the person you’re promoting is ready too.

Treat Your Employees

The little things matter. Whether that’s a dinner out with your team, a fun activity on a weekend such as an escape room to build team trust or even a small heartfelt gift. Being thoughtful will remind your employees why they work for you, boost their morale and confidence, and make them want to treat you just as well as you treat them.

Do you have employees who want to develop their lashing speed? Perhaps they want to move up to a faster drying glue. Why not consider investing in the Ultimate Guide to London Lash Glues eBook as a thoughtful gift for them? Keep your team positive, energetic and hydrated throughout the day with either a Lash Baddie Tumbler, or the brand new London Lash x Stanley IceFlow™ travel friendly cup. Both are perfect gifts for your employees to make their long days of lashing more enjoyable and refreshing. Make sure their schedules are up to date with our stylish Notebook so they can keep all of their admin up to date in one place, having matching items as a team can help to build that sense of community too.

Whether your team is large or you only work with a few people, being a responsible lash salon owner comes with the good and the bad. But, ultimately, if you make sure the foundations of your business are stable – that being the team that works for you and with you – you will see growth, success and most importantly, client satisfaction.