INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM

TO: Marc Bortz, Beth Bortz, Kathleen Bergeron

FROM: Danielle Gena, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY UIP 250 STUDENT
SUBJECT: Asha SalonSpa Proposal of Business
DATE: December 8th 2015
CC: Jerilyn Willin

Working at Asha SalonSpa in the Bucktown location for close to three years as both a Guest Service
Technician and Leadership has given me great insight on how this company operates as a whole. As a
leader in the SalonSpa industry, Asha has celebrated its 15th anniversary this November. As the years
went by, 8 more locations were opened all around Chicagoland area with a promising 9th location
opening in December 2016. Asha SalonSpas mission describes the company as Leaders in the
environmental spa business with exposure around the country and emphasis on enhancing our guests
total lifestyle. This, coupled with the core value of providing pure devotion to excellence of service
makes up the core mission and values of the company. Ashas core business and key clients rely on guest
retention and reputation as salon and spa services account for the biggest source of revenue for the
company. Every location is neighborhood based where the core clients are made up of the population
within a 5-mile radius surrounding each SalonSpa. Asha pursues the core value of pure devotion to
service to create a 5-star luxury experience at a reasonable price by relying on members of the team to
contribute something extra to every service (Examples: hand massages, sensory journey, etc). Asha uses
these rituals as a way to differentiate themselves from other competitors around the area such as Civello
and Blueberry Moon, the two biggest competitors. Asha also uses philanthropy as a way to differentiate
themselves through donating services to local organizations to raffle off for charity as well as gift cards.
The Bucktown location is also on the Bucktown Chamber of Commerce committee which also involves
itself if donating and charity.

Being a smaller business, each location is staffed with 1 general manger who will supervise 1-4
managers. All managers will report to both the general manager as well as the owners of the company.
These managers will oversee anywhere from 40 to 100 skilled technicians. As a manager of the
Bucktown location for the past year and a half, I have seen quick turnover and low motivation in a
number of the hourly and commission based employees. One of the main complaints is that many feel
that it is a battle to increase their compensation. In a company that is quite small, it is not financially
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feasible to grant all employees a 50% commission so we must look to different methods to increase
motivation and compensation. According to research done by Amar Fall, compensation is no longer
thought to be the best avenue to increase motivation. Fall suggests that increasing intrinsic rewards for
employees will help them build a greater self-determination when it comes to motivation. In the case of
our industry, the technicians who are self-motivated will see a financial reward through adding more
tickets and building a clientele. We can utilize methods like goal setting theory to help technicians create
a difficult but attainable goal such as increasing service sales by 10%. Employing this will allow them to
see a greater return as they are commission based and will also give us more capital to implement higher
commission as we grow.

Asha may also see benefit in employee relations by mandating all employees undergo training for
Experience Asha. As the introductory training session into who the leaders of the company are and
what our core values entail it is important that we mandate all employees attend. Currently, this class is
only required of people who are just beginning in the industry. However, by mandating this training for
all employees it helps create a reminder of the importance of their contribution to our core values. It is
hard for the employees to understand what they are working for when they do not know some of the
basics of the company.

While working in this industry has been a pleasure and a fantastic learning opportunity for me, I believe
that Asha will only continue to grow if its team is strong. There are fantastic ideas that are coming from
the top and a great amount of talent amongst the team. However, we must remember to instill our core
values within all members of the team and motivate our staff both intrinsically and extrinsically.

Works Cited

Bortz Group. (Nov 2000). The Path: Asha SalonSpa Handbook. Chicago, IL: Bortz Group.

Fall, A., & Roussel, P. (2014). Compensation and work motivation: Self-determination theory and the
paradigm of motivation through incentives. In M. Gagn, M. Gagn (Eds.) , The Oxford
handbook of work engagement, motivation, and self-determination theory (pp. 199-217). New
, NY, US: Oxford University Press.