Forget Summer Classes in the Heat, Take Spa Management Online Year Round with ISM

It’s difficult enough going to school, going to work, and dealing with the issues of your everyday life, but add a little summer heat and it can be downright impossible to get motivated about your education. So, rather than taking classes in a hot and stuffy classroom, why not advance your career by taking spa management courses online in the air-conditioned comfort of your own home?

The Institute of Spa Management (ISM) offers online classes year-round, making it easier than ever to achieve your goals quickly and easily. Whether you are new to the spa industry or a seasoned spa professional, ISM has a program for you.

At ISM you can choose the all-inclusive Spa Management course that covers all areas of spa management, including finance, public relations, client services, marketing, and more. At the end of the course you will be fully qualified to fill any spa management position available.

You can also take individual courses, such as conflict management, human resources, customer service, and others. It’s up to you how you want to spend your summer months, but spending it advancing your career goals with ISM in the comfort of your own home makes it easier than ever.

Support and Encourage Your Spa Staff: In Turn, They Will Deliver Exceptional Client Services

You’ve heard the old adage, treat people the way you would like to be treated. This doesn’t just apply to your clients, it also applies to your staff. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook your employees on a day to day basis. While you might truly appreciate the work that they do, there is no substitute for actually showing it or saying it in some form or fashion.

If your employees don’t feel appreciated or supported they may lose interest in doing a good job. This will only come back to hurt you because unhappy employees will create unhappy clients and this is not good for any business. So, what you need to do is set aside a specific time every day or every week to make sure you are truly encouraging and supporting the wants and needs of your staff, just as you would for your clients.

This might mean having weekly staff meetings, creating an open door policy where employees can come to you without fear of repercussions, providing regular training, developing individual goals, or even just having a pizza party once a month to let everyone blow off some steam. Remember, happy employees will make for happy clients.

Getting Back to Management Basics is the Best Way to Get Your Spa Business Back on Track (K.I.S.S)

When running your spa you can easily find yourself forgetting about the basics when it comes to managing your business and your people. Therapies change, complications arrive, theories evolve, but you need to make sure that you don’t get so carried away that you forget the basics that probably served you well before things got complicated.
What this means is not losing sight of the basic goal of business management, getting things done through skilled leadership, organization, communication, and planning. When carried out properly, using your basic management skills will effectively run or help any business.

This means applying the KISS principle to any business model or situation. An acronym for Keep It Simple, Stupid, it is meant to remind you that no matter how complicated things get, you can always address or solve problems by using simple methods. In other words, the best solution is usually the easiest or least complicated one.

Even if your spa business seems to be spiraling out of control, you can probably get it back on track again by keeping it basic and keeping it simple. Over complicating things in business, as in life, usually just leads to more complications and fewer resolutions.

The Day of a Spa Employee: Busy, Hectic and Non-Stop…

Think About Proper Footwear

As a day spa employee your days can be long, hard, busy, and hectic. Whether you’re the spa manager, therapist, or receptionist you can spend the whole day running around or on your feet without a break. Not taking care of your feet can lead to poor posture, stress, physiological changes to the feet, and other medical conditions, so it’s important that you wear shoes that soothe and protect your feet rather than torture them.

While most of us want to look both professional and fashionable while we are at work, we also need to consider safety and comfort, particularly when it comes to footwear. Of course, orthopedic shoes are not generally known for their fashion sense, but they have come a long way. There are now plenty of shoes available out there that are comfortable, safe, and fashionable.

When buying work shoes, look for ones that have non-slip soles, quality padding, good arch support, a firm heel counter, a rigid or semi-rigid shank, removable insole, and allow your toes to wiggle. If your feet feel good all day, then you will feel good too which will make everyone around you as relaxed, comfortable, and stress-free as your feet are.

Progressive Management through Quality Education (Without Leaving Home): Think ISM

In business, particularly the spa business, things are always changing, evolving, and moving forward on a day to day basis. What used to be popular or the norm yesterday may no longer be the norm today. So, it is essential that you keep abreast of the latest news, ideas, and methods that are being used in the spa industry today. The best way to do this is to continuously educate yourself as to what is happening in the spa industry, but who has the time?

At the Institute of Spa Management (ISM), you always have the time to learn the latest about spa management and improve your leadership skills through their online learning courses. Whether you are looking to get into the spa industry or are a seasoned professional, ISM has a variety of different management courses that can get you up to speed or help you improve upon your current skill set. The best thing is, you don’t even need to leave home or the office to get this quality education because it is available 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, so you can study at your own pace and on your own terms.

Spa Management: How to Determine Spa Hours of Business

As you know, your spa’s business can ebb and flow from one week to the next. This is especially noticeable after the busy holiday rush. This rollercoaster of high business times and low business times can also fluctuate throughout the week and even hour by hour, so determining the best hours of operation for your spa business can be a tricky task.

Depending on where your spa is located and what the lifestyles of your surrounding client base are can dictate what your spa hours should be. Perhaps you are located in a middleclass neighborhood where most people work during the day. You will probably find that most of your spa business takes place in the evenings or on the weekends. Or you might be in an upper-class area where your business spikes in the morning and during the week due to more flexible client schedules.

You need to keep track of these trends in order to understand who your clients are and what their lifestyles are as related to your spa business. Once you determine your high times and your low times, you can set your spa hours based on these trends in order to increase your profitability.

Spa Industry News: Prominent Spas Work Hard to Go Green

The spa industry is becoming an important leader in the fight against global warming by making changes to the way spas are run in order to help save the environment. The idea of going green is one that fits perfectly with the vision that spas around the world have had for centuries.

In order to spread the word of green spa living, several prominent spas around the country have formed the Green Spa Network. This grassroots, not-for-profit trade organization has started out by creating seed spas, ones that are committed to developing and sustaining environmentally friendly business practices. To date there are nine spas in the seed program and their main focus is to find the greenest ways to run their spas while also remaining profitable and providing their clients with the best services available.

In addition the Green Spa Network is gathering as much information as they can for their Green Spa Toolkit, which will provide other spa owners the tools and information they need to turn their spas green too. They are also putting together an annual green spa conference that will serve as a networking and information exchange opportunity for those interested in going green.