Apprentice within a rent a chair salon

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Lottieanne9

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Oct 27, 2016
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Location
Staffordshire
Hi guys ,
I was wondering what everyone else thinks about this .
I'm about to take on an apprentice , the idea being I can help her train and she can help me with my column and salon dutys, only problem is I have 4 rent a chair stylists at the salon and I can already see her being used for there columns .
How do I go about this ?
I obviously pay her wage but the chair renters pay a set rate and would benefit on takings with her help too .
Hope this all makes sense??
Would appreciate other peoples opinions please . Thanks
 
I'm not sure about regulations as I'm from Australia but could you charge them an extra fee on top of their rent if they wish to also use her for certain tasks.
I would put this in contract form to avoid blurred lines.
 
I agree that it’s potentially tricky, if you don’t set clear boundaries beforehand.
I’m going to make some assumptions here which might be entirely wrong because obviously I don’t know you or your set up but these are very common issues that get posted on Salon Geek regularly.

“I can already see her being used for their columns”
Is this a planned part of widening the assistant’s experience? (In control)
Or do you struggle with assertiveness and boundary setting? (Not in control)


As you are using chair renters in the salon, do you have any experience of managing staff?
You will need to be supervising the assistant and organising her daily work schedule to ensure she’s actually encouraged to learn and practise and not just cleaning and helping you all the time.

I think you should keep her working as your assistant only and only occasionally assisting one of them if you direct her to when you’re not needing her help. Be very clear that she only reports to you.

As the other stylists are self employed, you could charge them a higher rental fee to include having the use of the assistant, but if they couldn’t use her services when they wanted to, they could argue that you were in breach of contract for not making her available to each one of them, all the time. (It would be like you sharing a cleaner with 2 other businesses and paying the same price as them but the cleaner spends 3 days at business 2 and you only get him once a week. You would be annoyed that you’re effectively subsidising business 2, and so it wouldn’t really work.)

I think you should have a meeting with your chair renters explaining your plan to take on an assistant and make it clear that they won’t be covering her wages. However, she might help them out occasionally but entirely at your discretion so they cannot treat her as their employee. They have to ask you first, every time. You’d also have to make this very clear to the assistant so she doesn’t think she gets to pick and choose what work she’s doing.

Also, regularly review the situation talking to both the assistant and the chair renters individually to ensure that the arrangement is working well.
 
I agree that it’s potentially tricky, if you don’t set clear boundaries beforehand.
I’m going to make some assumptions here which might be entirely wrong because obviously I don’t know you or your set up but these are very common issues that get posted on Salon Geek regularly.

“I can already see her being used for their columns”
Is this a planned part of widening the assistant’s experience? (In control)
Or do you struggle with assertiveness and boundary setting? (Not in control)


As you are using chair renters in the salon, do you have any experience of managing staff?
You will need to be supervising the assistant and organising her daily work schedule to ensure she’s actually encouraged to learn and practise and not just cleaning and helping you all the time.

I think you should keep her working as your assistant only and only occasionally assisting one of them if you direct her to when you’re not needing her help. Be very clear that she only reports to you.

As the other stylists are self employed, you could charge them a higher rental fee to include having the use of the assistant, but if they couldn’t use her services when they wanted to, they could argue that you were in breach of contract for not making her available to each one of them, all the time. (It would be like you sharing a cleaner with 2 other businesses and paying the same price as them but the cleaner spends 3 days at business 2 and you only get him once a week. You would be annoyed that you’re effectively subsidising business 2, and so it wouldn’t really work.)

I think you should have a meeting with your chair renters explaining your plan to take on an assistant and make it clear that they won’t be covering her wages. However, she might help them out occasionally but entirely at your discretion so they cannot treat her as their employee. They have to ask you first, every time. You’d also have to make this very clear to the assistant so she doesn’t think she gets to pick and choose what work she’s doing.

Also, regularly review the situation talking to both the assistant and the chair renters individually to ensure that the arrangement is working well.
Thank you for your response you make some very good points there .

In regards to widening the apprentices experiance yes I would like her to get as much experiance as possible but I also do have trouble with boundary setting in the salon because they are all self employed it never really goes in [emoji19] .

Definitely think having a meeting with them all and telling them what's happening would be great , although I can never get them together at once , again being self employed they all have there days and times that they work and aren't really flexible to come in for 'meetings'.

Stuck in a hard place at the moment, I properly need to start it as an employed salon and have the assistant with it running smoothly or I stay self employed and not have an assistant.. not sure .

I have some experience with managing staff , but this is all new to me being the owner so struggling with it all abit at the moment .
Thanks again for your points very valued .
 
I'm not sure about regulations as I'm from Australia but could you charge them an extra fee on top of their rent if they wish to also use her for certain tasks.
I would put this in contract form to avoid blurred lines.
Thank you for your reply , yes I did think that but then there the pros and cons to that too isnt there ... tough one .
 
Some Clients we look after charge their renters each time they use an apprentice - a sort of bolt on service on top of their monthly chair rental fee.

So a fixed unit price x number of times used, Invoiced at the end of each month.

Others just include it on top of the monthly rental fee (i.e. all-inclusive) and their renters can book the apprentice time out in the calendar by 15 minute slots.
 

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