Summary

A day spa, nestled in the Rocky Mountain foothills, was faced with a challenge common among spas: a lack of massage therapists on staff. Due to their remote location—which often came with winter weather challenges—they had extra challenges in identifying and recruiting potential team members. Through several key changes, we were able to help them present eight qualified candidates in just two weeks.

Background

Located about 45 minutes outside of the Denver metro area, this day spa had a strong reputation among its guests, with many making an annual trip to take advantage of the tranquil creek-side location and exceptional service. It was so well regarded, that they could not keep up with the customer demand for services, not due to size or number of treatment rooms, but due to staff shortages. In fact, the ownership estimated that they were losing $150,000-$200,000 per year in profits solely due to this one challenge. They had tried all of their ideas and needed some fresh insight to maximize profitability of the property.

Challenge

While this day spa had a strong retention and boomerang rate (team members leaving and then returning), which spoke to its high quality leadership and culture. However, it struggled to identify new team members to recruit—from massage therapy to front office—especially given its remote location and challenging roads in the winter. They had attempted to solve the issue using the common tactics of posting on relevant job boards, building partnerships with local massage schools and offering referral bonuses to their teams. They even had attempted to work with a local recruiter, with disappointing results. When they did find candidates, they were often not qualified, leading to precious time lost in the interview process that could have been used to support the operations elsewhere. The issue persisted, and the leadership team was out of ideas and bandwidth.

Solution

Entering into the project, we were delighted by the culture built by the team, and understanding of the bandwidth constraints of the current team. They had strong selling points as a business, and we worked to level up their recruitment strategy in a few ways:

1. Sourcing Strategies: First and foremost, we needed to help them cast a wider net with their candidate pool. They had all but exhausted applicants, their employee network and new graduates. We worked with them to identify alternate sources for candidate identification and began engaging new prospects right in the first week of the project.

2. Structured Interviewing: From there, we had to make sure that the time was well spent, given that the team was all very busy and had little time to spare to begin with. We began with evaluating the steps required in their current process, ensuring that each one served a unique need, and distinct assessments. We crafted each step to ensure that there was no unnecessary redundancy in the process, and each step was intentionally and thoughtfully implemented. Redundant steps were removed, lengthy interviews were streamlined, and unstructured conversations were structured against very specific purposes.

3. Respecting Time: Since we wanted to ensure that everyone’s time was respected while interviewing, we created a thoughtful approach to address key concerns in the first step of the process, allowing us to stop immediately if there were mismatches in expectations for fit. We also made sure to do so while ensuring the candidate felt supported and valued in their responses. Issues like location, compensation, and conflict resolution were assessed quickly and carefully and allowed us to streamline the next steps for all involved.

4. Nurturing Relationships: The project was so successful that the property was unable to immediately hire all qualified candidates. Because of this, we created a strategy to cultivate ongoing relationships with the unhired (but qualified) prospects so that when opportunities arose, we were able to quickly convert those into employees and further reduce time spent on recruitment. Ensuring small but impactful touchpoints allowed our busy management team to carry this forward while focusing on the busy day to day operations of the property.

At the end of this project, the management team of the property had a comprehensive playbook for their hiring efforts moving forward, saving them up to 25 hours/week and helping them realize up to $200,000 per year in additional profits.

“I’m so glad we were connected with Annie. It was so awesome working with her and we’d love the chance to do it again when needed!” —Day spa leadership