25 Effective Salon Employee Benefits Ideas in 2024

Offering hair salon employee benefits is one of the best ways to attract and retain talented salon staff and some salon management software allows you to easily store it.

Your team is an essential part of each of your salon locations. That’s why these compensation and benefits packages are essential, too.

Whether it’s health and dental coverage, short and long-term disability, various types of insurance, a 401K plan or even flexible days off, these kinds of support all contribute to a better working environment.

Some salons even give their team members support with things like education or qualification courses, extra paid holidays, free services and discounts for family members.

If you want your business to stay competitive, it’s in your business’s best interest (and will make your life a lot easier) if you keep your experienced stylists-and the clients they bring in every day, happy and loyal.

Hairdresser benefits help a salon owner as much as they help the salon’s staff.

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1. What Are Employee Benefits?
2. Why Do You Need Employee Benefits in Your Salon?
3. What Salon Employee Benefits Can You Offer?
4. How to Choose the Right Benefits for Your Salon Staff?
5. How to Efficiently Manage Benefits and Compensations in Your Salon?
6. Conclusion

What Are Employee Benefits?

Essentially, it’s any compensation that you provide to full time or part time employees outside of work, apart from their personal salary or wages.

Put together, these things can have a huge impact on whether people stay with your salon or not, in the long run.

This can take the form of a service or program that you partner with, such as a medical services provider, but it might also be things like additional vacation packages, career support like education or skills courses, wellness programs or discounts for friends and relatives.

Remember, you can also link these things to additional privileges that come with seniority or extra qualifications, in order to increase your retention rates and overall team loyalty. It’s also a great way to motivate personnel to develop their skills.

Pro Tip: Sometimes, it’s easier to have a company or professional agency organize these, rather than trying to do it all on your own.

There’s a lot of information to go through, and it can often be cheaper (and less difficult or confusing) to have someone go through it for you and find you the best possible rates and offerings.

Why Do You Need Employee Benefits in Your Salon?

Do hairstylists get benefits? If they don’t then they definitely should.

Like many workers in client-centered industries, stylists often work long hours each day. They do their best to help each guest and possess a unique and in-demand skill set for their jobs.

And, at the end of the day, if your salon doesn’t give them these incentives to stay, it’s likely that your competitors will.

Benefit programs help you to keep your team of talented stylists happy. They also make sure that your employees are taken care of in both their personal and work lives.

This helps hair salons to create team loyalty. It also helps your team to be their best, happiest selves- an important ingredient in creating excellent customer service for each guest, too.

Every good hair salon manager knows that job satisfaction is about much more than pay. It’s about having access to a community that will help support you in your career and genuinely care about your wellbeing.

If you’re wondering how to create a positive salon culture in your workplace, consider spending a bit of time and money on related education, career or personal development service programs for your team.

They’ll thank you for it and clients will, too.

Hair salon benefit programs will benefit you, as well. Some of the advantages are:

• You’ll attract and retain talent

• They make you a more competitive employer Shows you’re invested

• They can improve your team’s health and wellbeing

• They will lead to improved motivation and productivity

What Salon Employee Benefits Can You Offer?

These programs are a great way to show your staff that you care and want to support them. Every stylist appreciates it when their managers or company offers them a discount or gives them career related support.

Here are some ideas of what many salons can give to their team:

1. Paid time off (sick days, vacation days)

2. Group health insurance

3. Healthcare reimbursement arrangement

4. Life insurance

5. Dental coverage

6. Vision coverage

7. Long term disability coverage

8. Short term disability coverage

9. Prescription plans

10. Retirement savings assistance (401k plan)

11. Free training

12. Education-related trips

13. Childcare assistance

14. Gym memberships

15. Wellness programs

16. Employee and family discounts or additional/ exclusive coupons

17. A flexible work schedule (especially if they have children)

18. Meal plans

19. Commuting compensations

20. Recognition programs and rewards

21. Incentives and bonuses (a salon contest for employees is a fun way to do this)

22. Team building activities, trips and seminars

23. Relocation assistance

24. Counseling services and mental health coverage

25. Profit sharing options

How to Choose the Right Benefits for Your Salon Staff?

You’ve seen the menu of things you can provide for your team, and you really want to retain your community of talented stylists. Now, how do you choose the right programs for your salon employees?

The good news is that the list is endless and there’s no limit to what you can offer your staff or join as a company.

Many companies (salons included) pick and choose what they’ll provide, and will often make changes to their list (sometimes on a yearly basis, but usually less often than that), depending on what their business can support and what the staff needs.

A salon that employs mostly older, experienced staff might provide a completely different package than one that hires younger staff members who’ve just finished school, for example.

Here are some tips to help you choose the right set of perks that will work best for your salon employees and your own specific business needs:

• Know your staff (what they find valuable can vary a lot across different demographics and locations)

• Ask them what they want (you might even create a survey and ask each stylist to fill it out)

• Keep it consistent and match it with your brand values (the best plans and salon staff motivation ideas are ones that work well with your brand’s image as a company)

• Review each perk and make sure that they match each other (create a plan with no overlap in order to save money)

• Find out what competitors give their team of stylists (and then do better)

How to Efficiently Manage Benefits and Compensations in Your Salon?

You want to be competitive and make each stylist on your staff happy, but you also don’t want to go broke. So, how can you do this without raising your salon expenses by too much?

There are a number of strategies that work best, depending on your salon. When you search for the right one that will work for you, make sure to keep your salon’s location, employees and overall work environment in mind.

The best way for a manager or salon owner to show that they care is to try- your stylists will appreciate it, especially if you explain your plan for your salons clearly and the direction you’d like to go in when you can afford it. This will give everyone something to strive for.

Don't forget to keep track of all of your staff benefits through keeping up to date your staff records and some salon management software allows you to store this information electronically together with staff profile

Many salons begin with these strategies:

• Offer more as your business grows (this will incentivize each stylist to work hard, too)

• Offer better packages with seniority at different positions/ with higher results on clients’ feedback (be clear about the how and why of this to avoid confusion or hurt feelings)

• Drop any perk if it’s not being used (even if they are cheap, this will save you money in the long run)

• Keep checking for better offers (many providers or companies offer bundle deals on multiple services or education courses- don’t be afraid to negotiate)

• Prioritize and adapt according to your staff’s needs (these may change as your salon also evolves, so be prepared to be flexible)

Conclusion

It can be challenging to find what works for your salon, and every stylist will have their own unique needs and priorities.

Ultimately, you’ll have to decide which things you want to provide based on your own business needs and your ability to pay for them, as well as what each stylist needs, too.

The best strategy is to listen to your staff and when in doubt, start small and build your salon plan over time. Don’t be afraid to change the content you’ve chosen or try new things if something doesn’t work for your salon. Like many good things, it’s a process.

Citations

Employee benefits
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=yN9vHhgi5lQC&oi=fnd&pg

Impact of employee benefits on work motivation and productivity
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108

The impact of flexible benefits on employee satisfaction: A field study
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1992.tb00844.x