Team building activities are an exceptional way to nourish your team, boost morale and create a healthy work environment. It is one of the key ways to manage staff, and this is especially true in the hair and beauty industry.
A strong workplace culture centred around collaboration and productivity is essential for any business. As a salon owner, it is part of your responsibility to get the ball rolling for your team. To nurture a healthy team dynamic, we have compiled some easy activities that you can use in your salon. In the salon, day-to-day is always customer facing and most energy is placed on ensuring customers achieve a great experience. However, it is important we also focus on how we treat our co-workers!
Did you know that team building activities can help to boost your bottom line?
Group Meditation | A good way to centre everyone and ensure a positive mindset to begin the workday is to start the day with 5/10-minute meditation sessions – there are plenty of Spotify playlists, YouTube videos and apps that can take you and your team through guided meditation! The concept is currently ‘on trend’ and has been shown to adjust concentration, increase happiness, and reduce stress. In the beginning, some may feel a little silly but it’s actually a great way for people to get used to spending time together. Meditation involves staying quiet and keeping your eyes closed to achieve the best outcome.
Group Lunches or Dinners | Taking the team out for lunch or dinner is one of the most common team building activities there is. It’s always nice to get your stylists out from behind the chair and everybody loves sampling food from their local area. It is also a great way to touch base with everyone, stylists are always so focused on their client and achieving the best result that, in a busy appointment day, they may not have the chance to interact with each other.
Try to schedule a day each month to treat your team to a lunch or dinner at a nearby restaurant with an open invitation for anyone that isn’t working on that day. This is a great opportunity to decompress and catch up – try making a ‘no office talk’ rule.
Many might see this type of expense as unnecessary when the money could be spent elsewhere, but the benefits you find for boosting team morale are worth more than what you would pay in a monthly lunch or dinner. This is a great example of an incentive; you’re putting additional effort (that goes beyond your work responsibilities) into boosting team spirit, and you will receive feedback in the form of a positive workforce and trusted employees that notice the extra work you do for them.
Alternatively, have your team each bring in a menu item and have a team lunch during salon hours – encouraging staff to keep a specific time slot free of any appointments, consults, chores etc. This gives your team two hours of ‘bonding time’ and encourages them to build strong relationships between you and your team.
Clubs related to staff hobbies | Stylists all have interests outside of what they do for a living and probably don’t bring them in to the salon. Take the time to talk to your team and find out what they like to do in their free time – consider forming a club revolving around their similar interests. Some examples are:
· Books
· Fitness
· Cooking / Baking
· Sports
· Arts
Not everyone will be keen to participate but those who do will build a strong bond and improve the mood of the salon overall. Eventually, they might encourage unsure members to join too. If the team are still cautious about trying a new hobby, introduce a show and tell – having each stylist talk a little about their hobbies and bringing in something of significance to show the each other. The aim is that this would inspire others to take on new or similar challenges – together.
Technique Trivia | You might not have time to put time aside to do all these activities and may not want to divert the focus during the workday. Have a bank of activities you can introduce during appointment slots. A great example is Technique Trivia. Divide every member; managerial team, senior stylists, apprentices, and receptionists into equal teams and begin the good ole fashioned ‘question and answer’ game. The questions can be asked at random intervals of the month and the answer can be called out – have someone keep a running tally and the winning team receives a reward.
Example: Ask three questions a week. As you’re heading to your office call out: When would you use fusion-bonding on a client?
The first team that calls out the answer CORRECTLY scores one point. Tally this up on a white board to track. Everyone in the salons performs different roles, therefore it’s important to make sure the teams each have similar responsibilities to make fair competition. Questions can include reception responsibilities, consultation procedure, hair testing protocols, bleach remedies, hair extension fitting or cutting techniques.
Learn Together | Not everything you decide to do with your team has to be strictly business related, but there also isn’t any harm in having an entire team learn something together where they have others to lean on for support. Enrol the team in a professional or personal development course where they can begin their journey. This not only gets the younger ones thinking about their journey but renews the passion for the senior stylists that might be taking appointments day by day.
At the beginning of 2022, Passion4hair launched the P4h Alliance Program which focuses on the development of salon owners, the business, and the team. This is something that hosts, Debbie Digby and Pete Cohen, have encouraged participants to do as a team. That means a dedicated 60 minutes every fortnight, sitting down together and thinking about themselves and their role within the business.
Your dream team is already there, you have confidence in everyone you hire. Now that you can build a better team, go ahead, and start putting these ideas into practice. Fully include your team – it works best if they can have their own input in to what they think would work best.
Looking for a way to gel your team whilst giving the opportunity to train further? Browse our P4h Academy classes – you can pay with points so it doesn’t have to cost you a thing!
