Staffing up your Spa Service Professionals is a key component to the success of your spa business, not only on a week to week basis, or as you plan for campaigns and promotions, but most importantly, when it’s time to forecast (re-evaluate) your service staff requirements for each new year.
Under or over-staffing your spa is always a critical error, whether you realize you’ve done it or not.
It is a piece of the puzzle that must fit snuggly into your business and financial planning, every week, month and year over year.
Projecting what service sales will be during both peak and non-peak times throughout each season, helps clarify how you need to staff up during these fluctuating demands on your business. You want to first ensure that you position your business for profit and always run promos and campaigns that pay so that you can maximize overall business opportunities and growth potential.
These variances in business demands will not only affect your service staff, but also your front-line staff and spa attendants. You will need to decide which management and miscellaneous support staff will also need to be factored into the equation.
A Mathematical way to Staff Up your Spa Professionals
As you begin to predict your staffing requirements for the period in question, you will need to watch for increases or decreases within the many components that will impact your predictions, such as: economic conditions, local and global competition, available staff, staff turnover, payroll budget, client demand, etc.
Below we have provided a formula in a simplistic form and calculated revenues on a quarterly basis, but this formula is one that you can customize to your exacting needs to help ensure you have all of your staff needs comfortably covered.
For this particular formula, in order to project as accurately as possible you will need to know in advance what the average hourly service revenue is for each of your treatment rooms (service revenue ÷ length of service x 60 minutes), as well as your service staffs maximum hourly revenue potential.
* If your treatment rooms are multi-purpose with differing hourly service revenue contributors, drill down and project the % each individual service in that room is expected to contribute to the total room revenue. Then multiply that service’s hourly revenue contribution by its % contribution to the room’s total revenue. Continue to do that for each service in that room. Add them together to arrive at Maximum Room Revenue.
1. Project Maximum Room Revenue
Average Hourly Service Revenue X Available hours per week X 13 weeks = Maximum (Quarterly) Room Revenue
Example: $100 AHSR X 55 hours X 13 weeks = $71,500 Maximum (Quarterly) Room Revenue
2. Project Maximum Staff Revenue
**All things considered (no shows, late arrivals, etc.), we’ll say that 85% is maximum staff productivity.
Average Hourly Service Revenue X Hours worked per week X 13 weeks @ 85% productivity = Maximum (Quarterly) Staff Revenue
Example: $100 AHSR X 40 hours X 13 weeks @ 85% productivity = $44,200 Maximum (Quarterly) Staff Revenue
3. Divide Maximum Room Revenue by Maximum Staff Revenue
$71,500 ÷ $44,200 = 1.62 Service Staff required
4. OPTION: Apply a Projected Room Utilization % to arrive at a more Realistic Room Revenue Projection
$71,500 @ 50% utilization = $35,750 Realistic Quarterly Room Revenue Projection
5. Divide Realistic Room Revenue Projection by original Maximum Staff Revenue
$35,750 ÷ $44,200 = .80 Staff at 85% productivity for this room to operate at 50% utilization.
Input your specifications into this formula to determine how many staff are required for each room and/or station in your spa. Add them together to arrive at the total number of service staff that will required to service the spa for the period of time specified (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.)
This calculation shows you how to keep fewer staff on site, operating at maximum productivity, as opposed to having too many staff on site, only partially productive.
REMEMBER:
When projections are based on averages, they provide approximations only! Drill down for greatest accuracy.