Inspiring employee motivation by creating a work environment in which your staff is consistently driven to excel at their jobs can be a challenge for any business owner.
You likely already have a few motivational tools in place. Perhaps you display a dashboard in your salon that ranks team members based upon their performance, in order to inspire friendly competition. Maybe you set goals for per receipt averages with rewards such as a gift card to their favorite restaurant if they meet and/or exceed it. It’s also conceivable that your staff receives a flat rate or percentage-based commission on select product and service sales.
As business owners in a service industry, it is important to consider potential extrinsic motivators such as tips, especially if you offer ancillary services such as custom airbrushing, massage or esthetician services, to name a few.
If you aren’t already doing so, constructing an atmosphere where tips are encouraged in a non-invasive manner will spark motivation and ensure that your staff delivers first-rate service to your customers – that’s a win-win situation in my book! The best part is that it isn’t you as a salon owner financially rewarding the employee for superior performance; but rather, the customer is paying a complement for a service rendered.
If you allow staff to accept tips from your guests, it’s important that you have an efficient method of collecting and recording them electronically.
Let’s face it: these days, most people rarely carry cash, so you need to be able to collect both cash AND credit card tips. You should have a mechanism in place that allows your salon guests to apply a credit card tip on their receipt as well as a method of ringing it up in the system to follow. This eliminates the awkward conversation of your staff having to ask the customer if they would like to leave a tip on their card. Not to mention, a tip line on the receipt might just prompt a customer to leave one when they might not have otherwise thought to do so!
Your software program should have the capacity to track the total amount of tips received per employee so that you can allocate them accordingly. The reporting feature must provide the details needed for a payroll export, as tips are taxable income and should be exported along with payroll hours.
Tips are a great way to keep staff motivated and working hard. The extra money in their pockets doesn’t hurt, that’s for sure! Every salon owner wants to maintain a stellar team of employees who care about the business and the customers, alike, for the long haul – incorporating the ability to earn tips is just another simple way to aid in the process. ν
Creating an atmosphere where tips are encouraged in a non-invasive manner will spark motivation and ensure that your staff delivers first-rate service.
