Spa Management Practice:

Delivering Cosnsistent Quality

Nicolay Kreidler

In the quest for quality and continuity within the guest experience, spas are looking for ways to deliver a sequence of events that looks and feels consistent to their clients.

Spa owners or managers therefore think it is important to try to control the way the therapists perform their work and lay down guidelines of how the treatment is done. After all, management then becomes a simple task of making sure that everyone follows the procedures properly.

One of the strategies to try to control the process is defining every step of the path from the moment a guest walks in the door to when they leave. The theory is that a consistent process will deliver a steady result.

From the 40 or more page “standard operating procedures” that govern the whole operating process to the “treatment manual”, a collection of protocols usually supplied by a vendor determining the exact amount of product, time spent and “rituals” performed, each tool, ingredient, process and dialog is defined.

Spa owners and operators have regulated and refined the client experience in great detail and have all their i’s dotted and t’s crossed, often with the help or encouragement of a spa consultant. In fact, one can buy standardized SOP versions off the web and with a few insertions customize it to suit the individual spa. One size fits all.

I have found it interesting to review some of the hiring questionnaires that include questions such as “

Protocols are delivered in binders from vendors and go as far as to remind the practitioner to present the obligatory glass of water at the end of the session. Often these protocols are concerned with utilizing the products that the vendor has deemed valuable in a prescribed sequence.

What many managers learn though, is that once the door to the treatment room closes, there is no way of knowing what happens in there without watching the therapist over the shoulder. In fact a manager has no control whatsoever as to what happens once the door closes. Most therapists will assert in fact that protocols are changed and procedures adapted once the door is shut.

Managers also find out that it is virtually impossible to force their employees all to do things the same way, especially behind the treatment door. And they discover that no matter how much effort is exerted, people do not really change.

To add insult to injury, they also observe that by instructing providers to follow the same procedures they zap their creativity and the more inspired therapists are less willing to accept the routines and often offer resistance, find the work less rewarding and ultimately leave to a place where they have more freedom to express who they are through their work.

Now if you don’t trust the competence of your individual service providers and have hired them with the understanding that they need guidance and regulation to do a good job, you should probably stick to a well-scripted process.

But if you are just not getting the results you want, you might be open to a different approach that requires you to trust the skills and competence of your service providers to deliver an experience that might seem inconsistent and different, but that provides the desired outcome.

You will need to hire staff based on their ability to perform, not follow instructions but deliver results. How they do it is not even that interesting to you.

By not regulating the process that happens in the treatment room or in dialog with the guest but attaching it to a defined outcome, managers relieve themselves of the impossible task of controlling the process. They empower the therapist to use their unique skills, personality and experience to reach the desired result in their own way.

Management becomes about defining outcomes and empowering people to be who they are. Because you have moved from the ability to follow instructions as a benchmark for quality to performance based criteria, you no longer have to supervise the process but are freed up to monitor the client response and feedback as a measurement of performance.

Providers and staff have been given responsibility to facilitate a desired outcome in part certainly with reoccurring elements and in part designed and desired by the client.

A desired outcome for the client can have some consistent elements such as feeling safe, taken care of, being heard, a sense that the service was worth the investment and so on but also needs to be defined in the provider / client dialog that initiates the session. The simple question to the client is really: “ Did you get what you wanted?”

This kind of environment will attract talented providers and keep those away who want to be constantly supervised. And since pathways to solutions are not linear it is also a great learning environment in which each practitioner has to  be awake and creative in accomplishing the task at hand.

As a manger you provide the framework. Discussing results of client feedback. Creating an atmosphere of trusting the skills of the individual practitioner in which clients and staff have the time and the tools to discuss and define what the outcome of their experience should be

You will hire the most competent, alive and creative practitioners not the ones that fit into a mold. Yes your expectations will be high but you will encourage leaders not followers.

Good Luck.

Nicolay Kreidler is a facilitator at Spa College.
Email:nicolay@spa-college.com