Clockwise from upper right, Christine Booher, Kate Greisser, Lori Obiedinski and Stacey Soble share time managment tips on a recent webinar underwritten by Aura Salonware.
Do you manage your time well? The truth is most of us don’t. According to Forbes, many employees waste as much as two hours a day at work between social media and other distractions. In the recent SALON TODAY webinar, “How to Leverage Your Salon’s Business Insights to Better Manage Your Time,” Kate Greisser, co-owner of Jade Salon, Christine Booher, chief financial officer for Elixir X DVS the Salon, and Aura’s Lori Obiedzinski joined SALON TODAY’s Stacey Soble to share insights on how your salon’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can help you optimize your and your team’s time management.
The hour-long complimentary webinar sponsored by Aura Salonware was rich with many valuable management nuggets to help you find time in your schedule, alleviate stress and be more productive. One of the first pain points the panel covered was how to manage the white space. Both owners agreed that they have witnessed more openings in the appointment schedule, but that managed well, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
“Increased white space is definitely a result of the economy,” said Obiedzinski, “But it also can be caused by seasonality. And in an election year, we also see that people’s decisions and purchasing patterns change.”
Booher shared, “One of our biggest pain points was focusing on how to navigate our systems to support time management differently, then really nurturing the guest who in the salon and how to really maximize her experience,” she says. “Being a luxury salon, we like to say, ‘The white space is the right space’—it opens the schedule for the right person to come in, and it gives the service provider the time to really deliver on the experience.”
Greisser agreed, saying Jade Salon fosters a culture that managing the white space is an expectation of the team. They teach their staff how to use the time to business build--keeping a list of activities a service provider can do when they find a little time on their hands. “It literally can be as simple as writing thank you cards to guests who have been in recently—snail mail is old school, but clients love it. We have admin time that we offer our team, so if they choose to do some business building, work on their numbers or create a social media post, we compensate them for that. Even though we are a commission salon, this fosters an environment where it’s OK if you have some white space, but you’re still here and working.”
Jade Salon currently has a poster on the break room wall that says ‘Social Media Brain Dump.’ “You might have a great idea for a social media post but not the time to do it. So you put it up on the board—it could be a funny one or something about the team, but someone else can take the idea and run with it when they do have the time,” she says. “We always have some kind of productivity poster in the break room that encourages the team to do something except for scrolling on their phones.”
Throughout the webinar, the panelists continued to offer valuable advice on time management, including the practice of time blocking, the key reports they use to measure and encourage productivity, and how they manage schedule flexibility.
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