Improve Your Medical Spas’ HR Department

Steps To Navigating The HR Jungle –
Top Mistakes Medical Spas Make & How to Avoid Them

Managing Human Resources in a medical spa setting requires a delicate balance between compliance, employee engagement, and guest satisfaction. Medical spa owners often focus heavily on their medspa treatments and patient care but overlook critical HR aspects that can negatively impact their business. Below are the top five HR mistakes medical spa owners make and how to avoid them.

Failing to Properly Classify Employees

Medical spas often hire a mix of full-time, part-time, independent contractors, and fail to classify them correctly. This can lead to serious legal and financial issues. Misclassifying providers/workers as independent contractors when they should be employees can result in back wages, unpaid overtime, and penalties for failing to provide benefits like workers’ compensation, social security tax, and other benefits.
Solution: Conduct a thorough review of your workforce with an HR professional to ensure compliance with federal and state employment laws. Proper classification will protect your medical spa from costly legal disputes.

Lack of Formal HR Policies & Procedures

Many aesthetic medicine owners, particularly those with smaller operations, fail to implement formal HR policies and procedures. This can create confusion about expectations, lead to inconsistent handling of issues, and open the door for discrimination or wrongful termination claims.

Solution: Develop a comprehensive employee handbook that outlines key policies, including attendance, code of conduct, anti-harassment, and disciplinary procedures, social media policies and more. Ensure your providers and support team employees are trained on these policies to create a consistent and a positive workplace environment.

Inadequate Training & Development

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Medical spa owners may focus on clinical training but forget to train the team on business skills and the guest experience. Providers and other team members often are not trained on the recommendation process such as the P.R.I.D.E. and the S.A.C.R.E.D. systems found on MedSpa Biz University, procedures, and guest relations to maximize the retention rate and guest satisfaction. Failing to invest in ongoing training for both clinical and business can result in underperformance, poor patient satisfaction, and a high turnover rate.
The S.A.C.R.E.D. System

Solution: Provide regular training to ensure employees are up to date on the latest medical treatments, guest experience, best practices, and compliance with regulations. Investing in programs offered on MedSpa Biz University for business training, will improve the quality of services and help you build a peak performing team and retain top talent.

Ignoring Performance Management

Many medical spa owners neglect formal performance management, for providers, such as injectors, aestheticians, laser techs and patient coordinators. They rely instead on informal feedback. This creates issues when it comes time for raises, promotions, or disciplinary actions, as there’s no formal record of employee performance.

Solution: Implement the VPG performance-based compensation and management system that includes regular performance reviews, goal setting, coaching, and feedback found on MedSpa Biz University. This helps in managing underperformers, recognizing high achievers, and ensuring accountability across the team.

Not Staying Compliant with Employment Laws

Medical spas, like any business, must comply with federal, state, and local employment laws, including wage and hour regulations, anti-discrimination laws, and health and safety standards, HIPPA and more. Failing to stay up to date with these medical aesthetics laws can result in costly penalties or lawsuits.
Solution: Stay informed on changes in medical aesthetics labor laws and industry-specific regulations. Consider partnering with an HR consultant to help you navigate the complexities of employment law and reduce the risk of violations.
By avoiding these common HR medical aesthetics mistakes, and implementing best HR practices, medical spa owners can benefits from improved structure, strategies, be legally compliant, and create a positive workplace that fosters growth, success, and improved bottom-line and profit.
Register for the Meet the Experts and watch the HR episode as Dori Soukup interviews HR expert Natalie Ivey, register now and mark your calendar for October 14th at 2 PM EST.
Article written by Natalie Ivey, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
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