You can have the best location, the best equipment, marketing and product selection, but your indoor tanning business will still only be as good as the team that runs it.

The key word here is “team.” If your employees are just a group of workers that come in for their shifts and do as they’re told, you’ll have severe limitations as an organization. To run efficiently and continue to progress as a business, your workforce needs to be a committed, cohesive team that is self-directed and works together to reach mutual goals.

When you have a team that actually cares about each other and the business, you don’t have to rely on fear of repercussions to get things done – you have accountability, loyalty and goals to keep things moving on their own. Members of a team always want to do better, because they never want to let each other down.

Of course, it all starts at the top, with the owners and/or operators. First, you have to provide an environment that fosters team building. To begin to develop a cohesive crew, the individual workers first need to be respected, provided for, and working in a place of integrity. They need to feel that they’re a vital part of the organization, being properly utilized, treated fairly, and much more.

Once you’ve laid this groundwork, team building becomes possible. A true team is based on a number of characteristics – commitment, contribution, objectives, loyalty, accountability, and much more. While one of the goals of developing a great team is that they’ll be self-policed and self-motivated, a team won’t develop without rules. Clear rules and objectives, absolute fairness, and open communication allow are necessary for a team to thrive and remain cohesive.

A self-directed team will take care of customers, move the business forward, and continually seek ways to improve performance, but it doesn’t happen on its own. Successful teams thrive on communication, consistency, respect, and many other pillars that need to be maintained in order to keep your team-based work culture going over the years.

For more details on these concepts, check out Smart Tan’s Building Your Team mini-training.