Recruitment and business training

According to Bonner, finding talented therapists is challenging in the region, but holding on to them is even more difficult. She sees a lot of variation in the industry and she claims there is a lot of competition from standalone spas, which offer higher basic salaries.

Hawco says that payroll is an issue, and Hewerdine asserts that a commission-based structure is the most effective option since this makes therapists “chase the carrot”, leading to better profits for the spa and more incentives for staff. Antoniouk believes that better communication between spas would help create a strong talent pool.

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Another topic that was raised was the issue of whether therapists should come from a spa or business background, with some of the experts commenting that business-minded staff lead to more profitable spas.

Here’s what our experts said

Hawco: “A big portion of being profitable is the payroll is very low. We don’t pay what any other market pays and we don’t fix payroll. It’s going to go up by 20% in the next two or three years and it’s going to absorb the profits. What we’ve put in place is performance-based. We’re paying people the basic pays, we’re not paying people more to do the same job. If they’re hitting numbers and targets, they get paid more. If they don’t they don’t.”

Neil Hewerdine: “I think one of the things we shouldn’t dismiss here is that the majority of the people that come in are very gentle, soft natured people, about 90%, so they’re not necessarily business-minded. But when they’re more commission-based, they find their own way and this comes in line with recruitment. It’s a massive challenge, but it’s recruiting the right person rather than just filling that spot.

Galina Antoniouk: “I think we should do some communication between us for the reference check because a lot of people circulate here. You could avoid mistakes if you talked more to each other.”

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