Hey, Anthony from MIG training. For any Paul Kelly fans out there his 2012 album spring and fall is a beautiful song cycle. It covers the journey through trials, tribulations love and loss and through the seasons. Business and education can be a bit like that. What’s old is new again, methods of training and education which at one time, you would never have considered are now on the table. And increasingly so in these times when finding staff is so difficult. We learn a lot from working with some of the best in the business. And looking at the way they train their staff, particularly those that have had experience over many years, gives us some great knowledge and insights. One example is Bach Hair here, Peter and Lee Hamner have 30 years of experience building and developing apprentices into creative and talented senior stylist. Bach Hair’s approach is summed up by Peter best when he says he loves it when art and technique come together to create fantastic hairdressing. Their team make it look easy, but it isn’t, they just train really hard.
So what are the things they do? What keeps that approach consistent? And how do they deal with the changing seasons and the difference in apprentices and staff as time goes on? Well, I suppose they do three things that are really important. One is for every new person that comes into their business, they set really clear expectations. So new apprentices and emerging stylists understand what it means to be on the floor Bach Hair.
Secondly, they provide huge amount of structure. So training for apprentices is undertaken every second Monday, the training is compulsory and paid for. The staff come together and undergo consistent and ongoing training that’s supervised by an Education Manager. And that Education Manager makes sure that there is constant monitoring and individualisation of all their training plans and commitments. Likewise, the salon managers are constantly communicating with the Education Manager to ensure that the development needs of each apprentice are met to cover it from a salon perspective.
And thirdly, they work really closely with us. So having an RTO that you can work closely with to ensure that there’s no tension in that relationship, so that everyone’s working concurrently and on the same page, it’s incredibly valuable to focus on similar things while at college and concurrently in the salon, and creates a great partnership so the apprentice can grow and feel that they’ve been invested in. So Bach have had 30 years of experience. And they’ve dealt with the seasonal changes, ups and downs, the changing seasons, technology coming to the fore, but the basic building blocks and structures remain. For example, getting scissors into the hands of an apprentice straight away, is a completely different approach to the way apprentices have been trained in the past.
So with that incredible wealth of knowledge, it’s important to understand the things that make BACH what they are and how they’ve been able to adapt. And their training system is one for all seasons and beautifully simplistic in its nature. Firstly, they set aside dedicated training time. Secondly, they communicate strongly with the RTO. And finally, they set realistic expectations for their apprentices. And they monitor their progress. At MIG training we work with a number of household names in hairdressing to help build their teams and capacity and their technical skills. If you’re looking for some advice, or would like to talk to us about how we can help, it’d be great to talk.
Give us a call.