Now that you’re a full-time esthetician, you have, or you are planning to have soon, your own spa or esthetics business. Surely you already read some of our tips to market that awesome project, and now you are wondering, what else do I need?

This spa human resource manual will allow you to grow your business standardizing it with The Estheticians and Spa Professional Association of British Columbia (E-SPABC) suggestions and findings.

The first step, of course, is the recruiting of your personel. Make a job advertisement that includes the basic job information, including the requirements and benefits for your employee, as well as working hours, skills needed, and day to day activities of the position. The more detailed you can make it, the best chances the right candidates will get back to you.

Be sure that you get that advertisement out to the right places. Craiglist and Kijiji are good for a start, but esthetics and spa schools, job fairs and specialized magazines will target the particular niche you might be looking for and might be able to recommend any students graduating. Check out this list of spa & beauty schools in BC.

After you've recruited the best candidates, you have to make sure your Dream Team stays loyal to you. The Employment Standards Act of British Columbia determines the minimum standards that employees and employers must follow on a work agreement:
The minimum wage in B.C is $10.45 and employees must be paid at least semi-monthly. As an employer, you must be sure your workers get paid on time, and they’re being paid 1 ½ times their regular wage if they exceed 40 hours a week.

You also have to make sure all employees are having at least a half an hour lunch break if they work more than five consecutive hours a day, and to provide the special clothing to perform their job.

Make sure you and your employee are aware of Statutory Holidays, Pregnancy, Parental, and Bereavement Leaves permits written in the Human Rights Code
and never forget to sign up a written agreement between the two parties to avoid misunderstandings in the future.

Once you’ve taken care of your employees, don’t pay less attention to your business assets. You’ll find out that the more your business grow, you’ll be acquiring more equipment, products, vehicles, and you could even find yourself expanding your retail and business space.

You, your staff, and all your assets should have the best insurance you can get; that will cover you accidents that unfortunately not always can be prevented. You can include owners, partners, employees, as well as business’ property and liability.

To reduce the risk of employee or equipment incidents, don’t forget you are responsible for the Health and Safety regulations practiced at your business. You are expected to give the best training to your employees, make sure you do work space inspections (on tools, equipment, and establishment) periodically, and have a first aid kit always available. As harmless as a beauty business may look, don’t forget we still require licensing for some of the tools and products we use and of course are subject to Health BC audits, so you can never bee too cautious.

It also seems a little obvious that if you went through all the previous steps, you should already have a business license to start operating, but just to double-check, make sure you are aware of your particular license. They differ from the municipality, time period, rental agreements and type of business. This last one is the more important, due to not all esthetics business are the same. There are also some Health inspection regulations mandatory for all spas in B.C. that you can find here.

To guarantee a harmonic workplace, make sure you and your employees follow the employment contracts and code of ethics. This includes professional conduct, ethical guidelines for treatments and respect for our clients and other workers.

Here in Breizh, we have a list of 6 professional traits that mark a good Esthetician, but if you want your business to keep growing and stay in the market, don’t settle with your team skill set, but upgrade it anytime you can. Provide continuous education to your employees by introducing them to product and suppliers educators (yes, those will be Breizh!), take them to trade shows, trainings, and seminars and sign them up for competitions. Apart from networking with other great professionals like you, you’ll be helping your employees to keep growing in the business and as individual professionals.
Always remember you are just as good as your weakest player!

Until next time! 

Mariana :)