Staff Scheduling Secrets: How to Avoid Holiday Burnout in Your Salon or Spa 

Staff scheduling for your salon or spa is a balancing act. You need to be available for your clients to increase business, but you also need to support your employees with a manageable workload.  

This balance becomes more challenging during the holidays when everyone’s preparing for parties and other special occasions. Left unchecked, your schedule can quickly go overboard, leaving employees burnt out and clients unsatisfied. 

Preventing holiday burnout in the workplace is possible with the right staff scheduling strategy.  

Offer Flexible Staff Scheduling

Flexible scheduling is a valuable practice year-round, but it can be especially beneficial for busy seasons. Allowing your employees to create their own schedules encourages a better work-life balance and makes it easier to manage time off requests during the holidays. 

The key to flexible staff scheduling is communication. Allowing your employees to choose their hours without awareness of other people’s schedules or core operating hours can lead to limited availability during certain times.  

Using a platform designed for staff scheduling, like the MyMeevo client app, simplifies the flexible scheduling process and provides transparency for everyone on your team. You can also define core operating hours and how many employees you’d like to have on staff during a given window to clarify when employees can pick up shifts. 

Hire Seasonal Help 

As you compile schedules during the holidays, you might find you need a little extra support. This is natural during a peak season and often points to a need for short-term help.  

Additional support at your salon or spa may not involve more hairstylists, estheticians, or massage therapists, but it could include administrative help. Hiring a seasonal secretary or support for inventory gives your employees space to focus on their clients without the business falling behind. 

The end of the year is also a good time to assess your employment needs in general. Have you noticed an uptick in clients in recent months? Are your employees typically booked solid? Hiring a new stylist or esthetician for the new year may be a good choice. 

Establish Boundaries 

When schedules get busy, it can be easy for your employees to pull longer hours than they should—yourself included. An important aspect of holiday scheduling is establishing explicit boundaries around the number of clients an employee can work with, or the hours completed each day. 

Staff scheduling flexibility is designed to widen your salon’s availability and make it easier for your employees to accommodate their lives. But it shouldn’t be used as a reason to work past your limits.  

If you incorporate scheduling software, you can view schedules and reach out personally if an employee seems overscheduled. You can also use big-picture views of schedules to assess time off and determine when more support is needed on a given day. 

Beyond the Schedule: Improve Employee Morale During the Busy Season 

In addition to the right staff scheduling strategy, there are a few other techniques for effectively managing employee stress during the holiday season. 

Create a Space to Talk 

When the holiday season rolls around, everyone is preparing for a busy schedule, but that preparation doesn’t make them immune to stress. To support employee morale and prevent staff burnout during the holiday season, create a space or time for employees to talk. You can establish this space with designated office hours each week, inviting your team to speak with you personally if they need help managing their schedule. 

Encouraging transparency with your employees is important to your spa’s culture. As the holiday season starts, make a point to encourage conversation with your employees. Whether you send out a newsletter to your team or set up a quick meeting to let them know you’re ready to listen, building trust with your employees has a huge impact during the holidays and beyond.  

Know When to Say No

The key to keeping up with a busy holiday schedule is to know when your salon is at capacity. It’s not uncommon for clients to call wanting a last-minute appointment. While you might have space for them, it’s also okay to say no. A client’s experience is only as good as an employee’s, and if everyone is maxed out, that eleventh-hour appointment won’t reflect your salon’s standards. 

Having a reliable way to manage appointments makes it easier to visibly notice a booked day. Software can be especially valuable for multi-location spas and salons.  

Getting an at-a-glance view of scheduling across locations can tell you when you have availability for those last-minute appointments. Plus, that visibility makes it possible to reinforce that “no” if it’s needed. 

Manage Expectations

Most spas and salons have experience with difficult clients—high expectations and strong opinions make these clients harder to please. Your employees might feel prepared to cater to these clients during slower seasons, but the holidays pose a whole new challenge. Your employees are booked straight through the day and lack the wiggle room to work with those difficult clients. 

These clients cause more stress than they’re worth, and it’s okay to turn them down during your busy seasons. In some cases, cutting off this kind of client is a permanent decision. Other times, it’s a temporary choice. If you choose the temporary route, you can maintain a good relationship with this client with a discount on their next service. 

Treat Your Team

One of the causes of burnout at any job is a lack of recognition for the work. Your employees dedicate a lot of time to your salon during the holiday, and they deserve to be celebrated. In honor of the giving season, you can give gift bags to your team to show your appreciation.  

Personalized gift bags can show you know your employees and can make them feel positive about the work environment. Gifts are an ideal option for smaller salons or spas when you have a small, tight-knit team. 

If you run a larger multi-location spa or salon, you can throw an annual banquet or dinner to mark the season. These events give people a chance to bond with their co-workers and celebrate the end of a busy schedule. You can even incorporate goody bags, raffles and awards to recognize great work. 

Manage Your Salon Schedule With Meevo

Managing your salon schedule doesn’t stop when the holidays do. With Meevo, you can stay on top of your appointment book and your employee availability, whether you run one salon or multiple.  

Count on our software to help you apply the best scheduling strategies for your salon during the holidays and keep your business growing throughout the year. Book a demo today to learn more about our software.