How to Do a Salon Staff Appraisal

The salon staff appraisal process can be stressful for both employers and employees. Yet, things are different when employees know what is expected of them. Things are even better when the owner knows how to conduct the appraisal for the benefit of the business and the employees' careers.

The right appraisal looks at the results obtained and how the employees achieved them. It provides an opportunity for your hairstylists to raise issues and participate in developing the next year's goals and objectives. During the meeting, skill development can be discussed to help the company grow.

Follow this guide for effective ways to conduct a successful performance analysis.

Jump to The Section You Like

1. What Is a Staff Appraisal?
2. How Do You Evaluate a Salon Staff?
3. Salon Employee Self Evaluation
4. Salon Employee Performance Review
5. Salon Manager Performance Review
6. Salon Employee Review Template
7. Conclusion

What Is a Staff Appraisal?

This is an assessment of your staff's performance along with a detailed look at the factors important for their job, their achievement and weaknesses and development direction. Salon performance reviews also look at productivity trends and solutions that can help staff deliver positive results.

Why is staff evaluation important?

Staff appraisal helps you and your staff to communicate well, exchange feedback, and define areas for improvement in order to ensure the salon's success.

How Do You Evaluate a Salon Staff?

Prepare For The Meeting

You must walk into the appraisal meeting armed with the right information. What have your teams been up to? What is the job description for each of your employees? What are the client feedbacks? What does your business critically need at this time?

Use Salon Software

As seen above, the data you need for effective staff performance review is vast. Using the right salon software is a great way to gather and organize the metrics you will need. The best software allows you to collect every bit of information, including staff attendance, sales, client feedback, etc., in one place.

Look at Clients' Feedback

Client feedback is a dependable health diagnosis for your business' profitability now and in the future. Bad reviews often mean that tough times are coming, and employees need to do better. Positive feedback is a reason to celebrate and recognize your staff during the appraisal.

Look at Employees Feedback

The performance of your team depends on many things, top among them the employee’s work environment and work culture. Aim to create a team that works cohesively towards common goals. Before the appraisal, look at what your stylists say about their work. Make it a point to find ways to improve their job satisfaction during the meeting.

Set Time

Appraisals should be a progressive or quarterly affair built around formal meetings and discussions. Nonetheless, your manager and employees should be updated on the expected times for the appraisals. They should be briefed on their targets and owner expectations—from client retention to improved sales and revenues—so they can prepare and meet the goals.

Be Fair

Negativity breeds a toxic environment. Owners must be cautious not to demoralize employees through unfair or excessive criticism. Handle the meeting with a sober, professional, and non-confrontational attitude. Listen before you decree. Some performance appraisal solutions have a comment helper feature that might help you develop fair comments to use in the meetings.

Be Specific

To avoid misinterpretation, ensure that what you say, criticize or decide at the meeting is quantifiable. Do you have the right attendance data? Do you have customer feedback and sales stats for the past quarter? If these meetings are to help with client retention, they must be data-driven.

Discuss Problems and Solutions

Don't be a faultfinder who never bothers about finding solutions. Identify the business areas that need special attention and work with your staff and management to devise strategies for improvement.

Set Target and Goals Together

Feedback and collaboration are the golden rules during goal setting. Set clear goals for your salon staff to reach before the next evaluation. Transform these into measurable targets to set your stylists on a path to success.

Provide Motivation

Salon owners must find ways to motivate each stylist so they can strive to deliver the best service. Motivation can be in training to improve their skills, team building events, or extra off days.

Document Everything

This will prevent misunderstandings during your next meeting. You can also make conclusions and plans based on the feedback. Forms and templates may be used, as well as salon software reports.

Salon Employee Self Evaluation

Self-appraisals involve employees giving themselves feedback. As opposed to waiting on salon managers to conduct performance reviews, they analyze their own careers, strengths, and areas of weaknesses.

When your stylist self-evaluates before the appraisal meeting, they can reflect on their contribution to sales and overall performance.

Taking a close look at their possibilities can make them more capable of aiming higher. A self-motivated employee is the answer to productivity, profitability, and achievement of targets.

Salon Employee Performance Review

Salon performance management can be quick and effortless if your appraisals focus on these key areas:

Performance Metrics

Each team member must understand that you are closely monitoring their performance. Keep track of the important metrics on productivity and growth so you can acknowledge good work or address areas of critical need. Before the meeting, you need to compile data on:

• Client retention rate

• New client retention rate

• Rebooking rate

• Service revenue

• Retail revenue

• Total turnover

• Number of clients

• Average ticket

• Customer satisfaction

Soft Skills

Soft skills development is critical for the success of your salon, given that most workers directly interact with clients. A stylist needs to demonstrate strong, soft skills to play nicely with colleagues and clients. Key soft skills to evaluate during the employee’s appraisal include:

• Customer service – What are the clients saying about the quality of service?

• Time management – Are the employees timely in their services?

• Conflict resolution – How does each stylist relate with others?

• Professionalism – How do they conduct themselves at work? Are they focused on excellent service delivery?

• Teamwork – Are they good collaborators?

• Communication skills – Are they good listeners? Are they courteous and patient?

• Cleanliness – Hair experts should be evaluated for their overall self-presentation

You may alos like: Salon Employee Handbook | The Reasons Why You Need One

Salon Manager Performance Review

You will need a special system or template for grading your managers. The process may be difficult and uncomfortable, but the buck stops with them. Ultimately they should be accountable for your business's average performance, improvement, and growth. For a complete manager performance review, these key points must be discussed:

• Mission, vision, and values - Are employees clear about the strategy, and do customers know what to expect?

• HR-related questions – How do you manage salon staff? How do you motivate a salon staff?

• Capital management – Have they properly managed money and salon resources?

• Client retention – Has the manager improved the rate of customer retention from last year?

• Marketing – What is the number of new clients? How effective are the channels, including website content and blog posts?

• Sales – Are sales fluctuating? Why? What can be done to improve service sales?

• Growth goals – Are you near to achieving growth goals?

• Costs – How are managers helping to reduce costs?

• Inventory – How is inventory management being done?

Performance Metrics For The Whole Salon

Beyond employee and manager performance reviews, your appraisals must zoom in on the overall business performance. Valuable metrics to help in the review include:

• Total sales

• Services sales

• Sales growth

• Retail sales

• Backbar costs

• Stock expiry right-off

• Gift card sales

• Total number of customers

• Clients per day

• First-time customers

• Returning customers

• Client retention rate

• Occupancy ratio

• Client satisfaction

• Staff Retention

More salon performance metrics in our article on KPIs for salons

Additional soft skills

Soft skills are the driving force of every business in this industry. Here are more metrics to help you determine how your workers are performing in this aspect.

• Administration – Are operations flowing as seamlessly as you expect?

• Knowledge of work – How are the managers performing in relation to goals/expectations?

• Leadership – Do they give direction and make proper decisions on key matters?

• Problem-solving – Do they run away from challenges, or do they find solutions?

• Finance management – Is the business liquid or in debt? Have suppliers been paid?

• HR management - Is hiring and retention being done effectively?

Salon Employee Review Template

Do you need an easy-to-follow hairstylist performance review? We are soon uploading hairdressing appraisal forms to lessen your work and give you a clear picture of the health of your business. Stay tuned to our blog posts.

Conclusion

Salon staff appraisal is synonymous with a health check-up. It must be done regularly, and all aspects of the business must be put under a microscope. The review helps identify and address areas of need and celebrate each team member for a well-done job. For help on how to do a salon staff appraisal effectively, start with this career guide.

Citations

Key features of appraisal effectiveness
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108

Staff performance appraisal using fuzzy evaluation
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-74161-1_21

Performance management and appraisal in human service organizations: Management and staff perspectives
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs