Complete Guide to Salon Walkout in 2023

Searching for the perfect guide to salon walkout to stop your best employees from leaving? Salon walkouts feel like the ultimate betrayal. Every salon owner experiences at least one employee walkout during their career, so don't get too upset about it. Even the most satisfied employees will inevitably find things to complain about and ultimately leave. In any situation, humans bring their own ideas, and we have an innate desire to believe that our viewpoints are the most valid.

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1. What is a Salon Walkout?
2. Why Do Hairstylists Leave / Why Do Walkouts Happen?
3. How to Prevent a Salon Walkout?
4. How to Handle a Walkout?
5. How to Prepare for a Walkout?
6. Conclusion

What is a Salon Walkout?

Salon walkout is when a stylist(s) leaves your salon business for another salon or opens their own, often taking colleagues, partners, or clients with them.

Why Do Hairstylists Leave / Why Do Walkouts Happen?

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The owner/manager is, unfortunately, responsible for that. In most cases, walkouts happen when salon workers are neglected or when they feel unappreciated.

Lack of Communication

Stylists quit because you are detached from their world, you don't know them, they don't feel ok telling you things, or they don't feel you care. Perhaps the stylists voiced their concerns before, yet the owner took no action. When communication lines break between the owner and the salon's employees, their next step, typically, is the exit door.

No Development

Stylists can quit because there is no education or knowledge offered or no growth and room for ambition. The lack of career paths defined transparently can become a stimulus to look for a new job. When salons invest in training to increase skills, there is also an increase in employee retention.

Bad Working Conditions

The key to retaining stylists lies in creating a safe and clean working environment for them. If the salon is in bad shape or location, or the environment is toxic, it ends with their work suffering. Salon owners must build a strong and positive work environment founded on safety, collaboration, and seamless communication.

No Team or Family Feeling

The absence of team spirit often makes employees feel lonely at work. Employee loneliness kills job satisfaction and can slowly drive your salon's staff through the exit door.

They Don't Make Enough Money

If your contract conditions are bad or you don't provide enough clientele, they will realize they can make more income elsewhere. With the right engagement and communication strategies, you may be able to retain your great employees through the tough times. Below are a few tips to get started.

How to Prevent a Salon Walkout?

Be There

Be present and know your staff. The workers should know that they can talk to you and you value them. Check in with your stylists every day and ask/note their concerns and suggestions. As a salon owner, you must take action or communicate plans to do so soon whenever you get feedback.

Invest in Education

Training not only retains loyal employees but also keeps the salon on top of the game. People want to work for the best. After investing in salon employee training, the outcome often includes a higher sense of job security, money, job satisfaction, and superior services in salons.

Create a Culture

Salons and spas can be a fertile ground for gossip and toxic drama among stylists. Your best solution is to lead a complete culture transformation to encourage collaborative thinking and rebuild lost friendships. Build a team and make them care for each other and the brand.

Offer and Promote Opportunities

Understand your salon employees' career aspirations and create opportunities for their advancement, for example, by increasing their tasks and responsibilities, paying them more money, or changing their title. Push them forward, allow them to explore new trends and industry knowledge and achieve growth within your brand.

Offer Fair Conditions and Benefits

Management should find the right balance between paying fair salaries to the salon staff and maintaining the profitability of sales and businesses. Offer competitive salaries, vacations, medical and dental insurance, bonuses. For more ideas, research the industry and look at how your competitors are paying their workers.

Make Working for You Simple

Give your salon workers easy access to you and critical information such as payment information or details on promotion and training. Consider providing flexible working hours (especially for employees that juggle work, school, and family) and rewarding hard workers, among other salon staff motivation ideas. Make them feel safe. Be consistent, reliable, and friendly.

Be Thorough When Hiring Staff

Nothing will help if you hire the wrong person, so make sure you choose your personnel wisely the next time. Successful employee retention starts with the hiring process by clearly defining roles and expectations. Ensure that the candidates you choose are the perfect fit for the job and the culture.

How to Handle a Walkout?

Stay Calm

Even if it's all your staff, keep your head straight to manage this effectively. As the salon owner, customers and stylists would be watching closely to see how you act under pressure. You can bookmark this guide to the salon walkout for easy reference.

Talk to Them

Have a personal talk with the existing employee. This would be a great opportunity to get the most honest feedback from the disgruntled hairdresser and discuss how the transition can occur harmlessly for everyone. Listen to what they say and put that feedback to meaningful use.

Talk to the Team

Explain the situation, let them know everything's fine, talk about how you're handling it to recover sales, who takes which client, and what shift changes are expected. Schedule future one-on-one meetings with each of the hairdressers.

Contact the Clients

Play ahead, better if they find out from you. Call your clients to let them know who will take over their appointment(s) or offer a choice. The most important thing here is to show confidence in your transition plan and convince them that their appointment schedules and quality of service will remain unaffected.

Retain the Clients

There will always be clients who want to leave. Make them want to stay. Provide a discount or free service for a limited time to compensate for the lost touch with the resigned employee. Aim to create brand loyalty, as opposed to an attachment to an individual stylist. Make use of loyalty programs and point out the things you are doing to improve services.

Make Necessary Changes

If you're responsible for why your former stylist left, analyze what you did wrong and improve to avoid this situation in the future. An important source of useful advice is exit interviews for the leaving hairdressers—don't skip this step.

Hire New People

Don't delay the search; find a replacement ASAP. Adjust your hiring criteria by learning from previous mistakes. Post the opening on your website and find the people with the right skills, cost and ability to work well in your salon environment.

How to Prepare for a Walkout?

Even the best salons aren't safe from a walkout, so better be ready, just in case. Here are a few readiness tips that could help your establishment survive or recover from the next walkout.

Keep the Clients Data

If the data on your clients is in the notepad of the leaving stylist, you will lose them all. Use salon software to ensure that it stays secured on your computer or the cloud. The right client data could be the key to designing an effective loyalty program that makes the customers stick to your retail brand.

Keep Track of Everything

Before or after the stylist leaves, see if you can details on orders placed, transactions made, appointments or anything else that occurs in your salon. With this data at hand, you can mount a marketing campaign to reposition your salon as the clients' favorite.

Have the Right Contract

Salon employee contracts should detail the notice period and other conditions to help you with a smoother transition. If the workers quit without giving notice, you are within your right to withhold the salaries you owe.

Have a Strategy

Spend time perfecting your post-walkout strategy to make it easy for you when the worst happens. If necessary, keep an eye out for some potential replacement candidates just if one member of your team unexpectedly decided to walk. This will save you from a long search.

Have Personal Meetings with Team Members

Talk with your workers every week. This will help you find out if something is not right or if there is a sign that your best workers might quit soon. In addition, they will be able to notify you in advance if they plan to leave. Having regular light talks with your workers (offline or on social media) allows you to comment on or fix issues before it's too late.

Have a Safety Fund

Even if handled perfectly, walkouts can be painful to your business for a while, so have some financial padding to cover it. This money will cover costs such as rehiring and fresh marketing. It will help you pay and retain a current hairdresser that takes on extra shifts.

Conclusion

A salon walkout can harm both the business and the remaining staff. The right strategies and advice should be proactive to prevent salon walkouts, prepare for them and handle them when they happen. Follow this guide to salon walkouts to stay ready, protect your brand, and keep the business open and profitable.

Citations

A typology of workplace policies: Worker friendly vs. family friendly?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0734371X03260845

Understanding the diverging paths of stayers and leavers: An examination of factors predicting worker retention
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740916301189

Predicting worker turnover: An assessment of intent on actual separations
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872679004300902