The buzzword of 2023 for salons has been “salon recruiting”.
The recruiting challenge has been faced by salons big and small and across the entire United States. It seems like no one is exempt from this. However, it is a disservice to consider a recruiting plan without considering your retention strategy as well.
At Talent Match we teach salons to
- Know their story
- Tell their story
- Live their story
Knowing and telling are a giant waste of time if you aren’t living it. Have you ever been given a glowing review about a restaurant but when you went to try it you were disappointed? Chances are you won’t be returning to that restaurant. The same applies to your workforce.
As you build out content to showcase the inside of your brand and help people see the value in working there it’s critical that the day they show up for work they get what they were “sold.”
Recruiting has become a function of marketing, and you don’t want to see yourself as a candidate and have them want a refund!
At Talent Match one of the ways we support salons in ensuring they are living the story they’ve been telling is to do an internal audit of what we call your cultural shadows.
Cultural shadows in a salon fall into two categories. The first category is the small shadows category. These shadows exist but they are not a threat to your culture or your ability to recruit and retain people. The other category is the largest shadow category, and these shadows represent a threat to your recruiting and retention work in the salon.
The best way to discover a shadow is to sit down with your team and start to ask about the things they would like to see evolve or what they wish was different. Frame this up as a constructive conversation to avoid going down the rabbit hole.
The purpose of the conversation is gaining awareness, not to solve everything in one setting.
Once you know about your shadows it’s important to address the ones you know need addressed. If you take the time for discovery but don’t then work to solve you’re showing your team that they aren’t that important.
