The Therapist – Management Retail Disconnect
There are currently 32,930 vacant positions for therapists in the US spa industry and 1,030 for managers. Inspired by these findings from its annual Spa Industry Study, the International Spa Association (ISPA) Foundation commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to conduct a global study to get underneath the reasons for the high number of vacancies.
Retail was one of the issues that were uncovered.
Therapist perspective
The overwhelming majority of service providers are passionate about providing exceptional client service and they would like to have a long-term career in the industry. Flexible scheduling and the ability to balance work and home life are important to these employees (see Graph 2). However, they do perceive issues surrounding their compensation package. Less than half agreed that their total compensation fairly reflected their contributions. Pay/salary ranked high (46 per cent) among the factors attracting service providers to the industry and this research may suggest a gap between expectations going in and the actual real-life experience.
The sometimes thorny topic of retail up-selling was also explored in the research. A key finding was that 46 per cent of service providers do not believe that up-selling retail products is actually their responsibility. This compares to almost 90 per cent of management believing that service providers should have this responsibility. There is a clear disconnect. When focusing on millennial service providers, they were more willing to accept up-selling as part of their role, so the message appears to be potentially changing across the generations.
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Linda Harding-Bond
