survey results continued...

With a continually growing industry, there will be a need for well trained therapists to fulfill positions. It's no surprise that 68.8% of you said, that you had, had some difficulty locating or obtaining effective training for yourselves and your employees.   There have been both surveys and debates about what the industry needs in training, and the lack of training in some areas. Earlier this year, at the Spa Summit in New York, a group of leading visionaries in the industry came together to help determine the future direction of the spa industry and it's growth.

This was a global view that included the experience and input from several continents, including what is in development and what is on the drawing board for our future. Part of this discussion was addressing the global labor shortage on training, it's needs, and it's gaps. What did they have to say about it and what can we do? We'll it was evident that the discussion direction indicted that labor shortages are a top industry challenge, and that in part, is due to educational standards not meeting the needs and expectations of expanding companies. We should be prepared to ask strategic questions of any training we look into. Whatever the training may be, the final decision makers will be a process of vision, direction and intent, intent with what you want your business or treatments to be, and the future needs of your business and clientèle.

  It was nice to see that there was now a forum for international collaboration on labor and education, among other topics. Since I plan to attend this summit at it's second annual conference next year, I thoroughly looked into the post conference comments and the results. I was impressed with the topic focus, objectives and advisors involved, which seemed to attempt to expand upon the duplicative trade show and conferences available to us. My long term goal with this is to do my part in helping to resolve the issues in our industry along with providing feedback.

With regard to the survey, we have put together an overview to   provide you with the most comprehensive results of our industry. The responses below, will show you what people feel is driving their specific demographic and what their individual needs are. The majority of the respondents were spa owners, with an average of $10,000 a year in training related expenses. We gleaned some valuable information from these respondees, expressing their needs for well trained talent, and challenges.

Most of you feel that it is necessary and of value to have more economical and effective trainings that can be offered in easy forums, like on line access and certification. Since the average yearly output for training is $5,000 - 10,000 for this demographic, you also felt that this expense had affected business performance, and that it had delayed business expansion or additional equipment purchases. This is no surprise, as weighing in the cost of training for any business, requires calculating a decent break even point to make it valuable and can restrict funds for purchases of equipment, or product. It was also helpful to see that a large number of you, 83.3% to be exact, preferred off site trainings, providing CEU credits, with an average length of 2-3 days.

Another questions of interest was the specific training suggestions, outside of the typical ones listed. There was a   wide collection of suggested training topics. Some of which included;

•  Spa services

•  Small day spa operations

•  Selling for those who hate to sell

•  All phases of spa industry

•  Insurance coverage for therapeutic massage

•  Increased profitability

We've listed results of respondents from other technical and qualifying questions in a simple over view, charted here. If you would like more specifics on these, please let us know. The results are summarized from industry participants that included directors, owners, independent practitioner's and other therapist/service providers employed in the industry.

We are continually working to develop and provide training with more online options, one of the big survey requests, along with more "specialty" focused and well rounded training for therapists and spa owners. Please feel free to provide us with additional information to assist us in creating exciting, innovative training systems.

We hope this aggregate information has been helpful to you. We will continue to keep you updated on future developments in our organization along with availability of advanced training options, not only from our organization, but a variety of industry options.

If you did not have a chance to participate in this survey, we encourage you to take the time to do so, as we will be gathering subject data until August 15th .  

Once again we are offering a worthwhile gift for your participation. This month's offer is complimentary e-book from Authors Liz Galloway and Heather Gallegos.

Take on line survey at: http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=2wb7cxsch4ttu26203742