How to motivate a nail & beauty team during lockdown

Thanh Vu, managing director of four Dream Nails salons, shares how she is keeping her staff members motivated & morale high during lockdown…

Thanh Vu

Dream Nails employs 30 staff members across its salon network. It has always been my belief that the staff are the single most important reason behind the success of Dream Nails and, ultimately, our ability to please our loyal customers.

The nail and beauty business is a service industry with nail technician to client contact integral to the client experience. We like to think of our clients as friends and our team has friendly ear to listen to problems. I appreciate that it is more important than ever to be an ear to the team itself, so that staff members will be able to return to work eager, mentally strong and raring to offer their usual high standard of service.

The importance of understanding staff

As I expanded my business, one thing I promised myself and my team was that I would make sure every staff member is considered an individual and not simply a number. I think this is essential so staff members feel valued, but it also gives me a great understanding of what makes each staff member tick.

Every staff member we employ is unique and it is down to me to understand their individual motivations.

Some of my staff are very money driven, some are aiming for Dream Nails management, some are simply obsessed with everything nails while others like to come to work and do a great set of nails but not have any worries once they leave the salon. A good ability to understand the individual drivers of my staff enables me to tailor programmes during lockdown.

Regular contact & team meetings

Throughout lockdowns 1 and 2, and no doubt lockdown 3, the Dream Team has embraced Zoom. We have bi-weekly Zoom meetings that last for an hour to discuss all things nails and beauty but we make sure a glass of wine is regularly to hand! I find the relatively informal Zoom meeting over drinks fosters some great ideas and even though we are not together, it ensures a common goal amongst the team – that is, how to keep Dream Nails driving forward in a tough recessionary environment.

One particular highlight was the Dream Nails virtual cocktail session which proved fruitful in coming up with nail art ideas.

We also operate a vibrant WhatsApp chat group. Understandably, some staff are making the most of down time on 80% of their usual wages thanks to furlough. However, the vast majority are extremely active in the WhatsApp group sharing jokes. I came back to my phone and discovered 150 WhatsApp messages in the group recently.

In addition to team meetings, I have personally called all staff members to discuss the salon, give them an insight into business financials, let them know of things that they have done particularly well and areas that they can develop. Also, I tend to have a general chit chat too. I am a believer in being open and approachable.

Financial Stability

We are incredibly grateful to the government for its support in extending the furlough scheme to April and we have been an active user of the scheme. Our staff are very grateful and take comfort knowing they are receiving at least 80% of their basic salaries. Many of them have said they feel better off when furloughed during lockdown as there simply isn’t the ability to spend it.

We have also made a commitment to remain financially prudent as a business so as to ensure we have some savings for a rainy day.

It just so happens we have had a few rainy days this year. However, the prudence has helped us provide job stability and prior to lockdown  we were actually in the process of hiring.

Downtime = opportunity to learn and move forwards

The two major projects we have embarked on are creating press-on nails and developing our TikTok presence. Our press-on project has given many of our willing nail technicians the opportunity to continue to practise what they love doing. Hopefully, you will agree some of their designs on our Instagram are pretty fabulous.

Maria and Valentina are taking the lead with TikTok and helping to build our presence. Hopefully we will have a fair few Tik-Tok nail videos being released soon.

It is a tough environment and our staff members are having to deal with mental stresses, home-schooling and missing their family to name a few of the hurdles. However, our staff members can rest assured they have my full backing, financial stability, job stability, a boss who is extremely motivated to drive the business forwards and they know they are a valued member of the Dream Team.

Inevitably, I believe receiving 80% furlough for not working at all can set a dangerous precedent and could potentially lead to staff not having the drive to return to work. However, I am lucky that all the steps we have taken and our recruitment policy means our team genuinely love their work and already staff are wanting to return to what they love doing.

www.dreamnailsbeauty.com