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

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.

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 your business in the marketplace, which is especially important now because there are more vacancies than there are staff. When you are trying to attract new talent and retain your current team, candidates really do look beyond their wages to see the other benefits of joining a

“Being able to measure the results of any training and development makes it easier to evidence and justify training budget proposals and strategies.” business.

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