A couple of months ago, one of our collaborators Valerie Delforge illustrated how communication levels within your team had direct repercussions on your salon’s success. It’s one thing to make the resolution of meeting up with members of your team, but it’s another thing to conduct these meetings in an efficient manner. So whether you don’t know where to start or you simply want to increase their efficacy, here’s some guidance on how to conduct amazing one-to-one staff feedback meetings.
The Idea Behind One-To-One Staff Feedback Meetings
In general, meetings are great to establish procedures, give business updates, motivate your team and provide a time to brainstorm. But why bother with individual meetings?
Simple. They allow you to:
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- give every employee their required targets,
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- talk about their personal journey within your business,
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- discuss training and interests,
- and most importantly, you get them to build a relationship together.
Improving the way you communicate with every employee makes everything smoother.
Understanding Your Employee’s Behaviour
First, I want you to picture this scenario.
You call your staff up for an informal update. From now on, everyone is required to put into action an idea of yours to add a special touch to your customer service. Everyone agrees. A week later, however, you check-in on your team and realise no one is following through with your request.
Sounds familiar? Why do you think this happens?
Every person is different, interprets things differently, and not all priorities are the same for everyone.
For instance, you give me instructions or recommendations and I don’t understand where you’re coming from, I probably won’t feel entitled to act upon them. When initiating change, you need to consider the people you’re talking to.
A Personality Test To Help You Manage Staff
Within the past three months, every team in Phorest attended a full-day DiSC workshop. Explained simply, the DiSC profile is a non-judgemental tool used to discuss people’s behavioral differences, improve work productivity, teamwork communication. While we did a full-day professional training, you can find similar free tests online, here for instance. If you’re willing to give it a shot, why not have every member of your team to take the test (this online version takes between 10-15 minutes to fill out)? You’d still get insightful results that will help you understand your employees better, minimise team conflict, develop stronger sales skills and manage more efficiently.
What Comes After… Your Action Plan!
Whether you’ve given the personality test a try or not, remember that a one-to-one meeting with an employee should last no longer than an hour.
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- Catch up informally (approx. 5 mins.)
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- If your staff did the personality test, perhaps take 10-15 min to discuss the results and understand from where they’re coming from.
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- Allow your staff to express their thoughts and concerns within the workplace (approx. 15 mins).
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- Give constructive feedback on their work (approx. 15 mins).
- Finally, discuss targets and expectations, find something you can both be held accountable for. Mention the fact you’ll look back on how things have progressed at the next meeting (approx. 10 mins).
Additionally, to help you keep track of these staff feedback meetings, we have prepared a special document specifically for salon owners and managers you can download right here! 🙂
Best of success to you and your team, and thanks for reading!
#LetsGrow