Thought Leadership The Big Debate
Back to basics for skills training Kathryn Dowthwaite-Blay, founder and director of the Spa Education Academy, outlines how to deal with the skills gap at management level
Kathryn DowthwaiteBlay is the founder of Spa Education Academy, which provides degree-level spa management qualifications online. She has spent 22 years working internationally in spas, academia and managing spa degree programmes. Her work has been published in magazines and academic books, and she is an active judge and speaker at spa conferences in the UK and the Middle East.
Future-proofing career paths We need to stop thinking about spa manager training as being a separate entity and recognise that every industry needs to upskill its managers and keep up to date with research and trends in business, management and leadership. Coaching, mentoring, employee wellbeing, culture and diversity are hot topics at the moment. We need to constantly adapt our skill sets to future-proof our careers. Nurturing your staff helps to build a solid reputation for “Being able to measure your business in the marketplace, which is the results of any training especially important now because there are and development makes more vacancies than there are staff. When you it easier to evidence and are trying to attract new talent and retain your current team, candidates really do look beyond justify training budget proposals and strategies.” their wages to see the other benefits of joining a business. www.spaeducationacademy.com 74
Image courtesy of Dermalogica
Kathryn Dowthwaite-Blay Founder, Spa Education Academy
Image courtesy of Champneys
T
here is a real skills gap in the spa industry: we have talented, enthusiastic people who have successfully worked their way up the career ladder, but often without acquiring some of the basic tools to conduct their job. Despite their hard work, they often lack leadership skills and the confidence to effectively carry out day-to-day tasks, such as leading meetings and training. Most concerning is that many lack basic finance skills, such as dealing with costs and budgets, return on investment, working capital, pricing strategies and P&L. Investing in education and training should always be a priority in order to arm your spa team with knowledge, skills and confidence. If more of our senior leaders were advocates for education, we would see a positive shift where this becomes valued. Return on investment (ROI ) for education is hugely underestimated within the spa and wellness industry, so being able to measure the results of any training and development makes it easier to evidence and justify training budget proposals and strategies. Often sales training ROI is recognised, but many struggle to measure the impact of developing staff in other areas; for example, quality management or leadership often don’t come as high up in a spa’s training plan. Measurement tools, such as data on customer service satisfaction, surveys for quality management and analysing data on the retention of staff, recruitment, retraining costs and performance can justify investment in leadership training.
www.europeanspamagazine.com
