Your salon has been getting busier, and so, you decide it’s time to hire an additional person to reduce the load and, hopefully, generate more revenue.
After much planning and consideration, you find the ‘right’ person and offer them the job.
Things look promising initially, and you breathe a big sigh of relief…and then the problems surface.
As a business owner, chances are you’ve been in this position already, and if you haven’t, then I take my hat off to you for your amazing recruitment skills or sheer good luck.
The fact is, sometimes, no matter how much research you do and how many questions you ask, you’re going to hire a lemon.
But once done, what do you do about it?
Well, naturally, prevention is always better than cure, so although this advice may be a little late for this hire, better recruitment skills might help to avoid a recruitment disaster in the future. One mistake is painful but repeating that same mistake borders on sheer craziness.
But once you’ve hired, there are things that you can do to resolve a difficult situation.
Let’s start by looking at where your new recruit is failing, because there can be two different outcomes, depending on where the problem lies.
Lack of Technical Skills
If lack of skills is the problem, then the problem is actually your fault. A big part of your recruitment process should always be vigorous skills testing.
Yes, you have to pay the prospective employee for their time, but let me be brutally honest with you, this is a cheap investment compared to what it might possibly cost you in lost clients in the future.
It’s not enough for your new recruit to look good on paper – they must be able to follow through with the delivery of the high-quality treatments your clients expect from your salon.
But the good news is that skills can be taught or improved. It may be that your new employee did things differently at her last salon or that she learned a different technique at her college. Either way, if the only problem you have with your new employee is skills-based, then it may be well worth your while to persevere with them and to develop a training program to bring their skills levels up to your standards.
Yes, it will come at a price, but it’s not a lost cause entirely.
Bad Attitude
No matter how skilled or experienced your new employee is, if she has brought along a bad attitude with her, then you really do have a problem on your hands.
It’s pretty easy to conceal a poor attitude throughout the recruitment process. Most people know how to answer your questions with the words you want to hear, and most past employers don’t want to say bad things about their past employees when you check job references.
But here’s the thing.
You can change skill sets, but it’s almost impossible to change a bad attitude – it seems to come built-in.
These people have a heavy chip on their shoulder about something and they’re determined to make as many people as possible suffer because of it – and that includes you, their co-workers and their clients.
Believe me when I tell you that the longer your persevere with this type of employee, the more you and others will suffer.
Trying to be ‘fair and reasonable’ with these people or trying to ‘understand’ the reason why they are the way they are is akin to bashing your head against a brick wall.
You are not their mother, sister or psychiatrist and it’s not your job to ‘fix’ them and turn their lives around.
What your job as a business owner actually entails is to protect your clients, your other employee’s well-being and, of course, your business and livelihood.
Now what you do from here will depend on how they’ve been hired and from where you operate. You must make sure you are completely within the law before taking another step. Some countries or states allow you to put off a new recruit if they were hired for a trial period and it’s clearly stated in their contact. If that’s not the case, you may need to go through a process of warning letters and meetings to try and resolve the issue.
Either way, ALWAYS adhere completely to your legal requirements, but don’t persevere with bad employee behaviour.
It will cause you untold stress and possibly have a negative financial impact on your business also.
When it comes to recruitment, I always recommend never to hire in haste, no matter how urgently you may need another employee. To do so may result in long-term issues that will affect every part of your business