"We like that with Built, everything is in one place, making it very easy to review requests."

As new owners of Celebrity Spa & Salon, Laura Wagner and her business partner Leah were looking for guidance to expand operations. A decision in 2008 to partner with Summit Salon Consulting Group, the world's largest salon and spa consulting firm, resulted in exponential growth and access to a resource-rich community.

To meet new business demands, Celebrity Spa & Salon had to increase its staff of service providers and with that came additional office administration duties. A stylist by trade, Laura was dealing with the frustrations of managing schedules and time off tracking for this growing team.

"The salon industry is very different than most nine-to-five jobs. In our industry, most people don't get PTO, but we do offer this benefit to our employees. Managing time-off tracking for our workforce is a very complicated process, and the amount of paperwork was challenging."   - Laura

Time off requests were submitted by paper form, and with each submission, Laura faced a tedious process of manually tracking hours and reviewing requests. Using a laminated dry erase calendar, Laura would notify the team of a schedule change and keep track of overlapping requests. To maintain records, each paper form was scanned, emailed, and filed into a binder once approved.

Photo courtesy of Celebrity Spa & Salon

Each time a request was approved, Laura would manually calculate the remaining hours for the employee. Confusion often occurred once the employee was promoted to a new benefit level or had multiple requests submitted at the same time.

"It was challenging to track and update time off benefits. Employees may jump to a different level halfway through the year, but tracking was all done on paper and not easily updated."   - Laura

At Celebrity Spa & Salon, service providers achieve promotions based on several factors throughout the year, including guest satisfaction, guest retention, performance, and education. While unpaid time off is accrued by tenure, each employees' paid vacation benefits are based on these promotion levels. The policies assigned to each employee are continually changing as new levels are reached.

Celebrity Spa and Celebrity follows a Multilevel Promotions System that requires
adjustments to employee PTO benefits based on promotions.

A lack of digital records also made accounting duties challenging for Laura's sister, and business partner, Leah. To complete payroll, all paid time off had to be correctly accounted for during the pay period the hours were taken. It was a hassle to communicate and confirm records every two weeks when Leah lacked access to the paper records.

"My sister would call me every other Sunday, on my day off, regarding payroll. It would be frustrating for her because my paperwork was at the office and she couldn't double-check records."   - Laura

Celebrity Spa & Salon is dedicated to maintaining the best team environment, but its process for tracking and communicating employee benefits lacked efficiency. Without access to digital records, time was spent outside of work hours to communicate this vital information.

Exchanging their dry erase calendar and binders for a cloud-based platform streamlined communication for the Celebrity Spa & Salon team. All dialogue regarding a specific request is stored within the employee's profile and linked to the hours in question. This organization eliminates the multiple text and email threads Laura once used to respond to requests.

"We like that Built allows us to easily communicate with employees if there is an issue with a submitted request. We no longer have to spend time texting back and forth with employees to resolve these issues."   - Laura

Instead of continually updating a physical calendar, the Built calendar and notification system allows the opportunity to see and prevent scheduling conflicts before time-off is submitted and approved. Employees value having 24-hour access to their account balances, and the management team appreciates having necessary records at their fingertips.

"I definitely think that this transparency is the best benefit employee-wise because everything was on paper before, and I was the only one that had access."   - Laura

The software tracks policies like education days and switch shift hours that are valuable to the employee advancement system within the industry. Creating a switch shift policy provides the opportunity to notice patterns when an employee is repetitively requesting to adjust their assigned hours. Laura monitors these schedule changes and uses the records of this policy to identify reasons why an employee might be having difficulty building clientele, or may not be advancing to the next level.

Celebrity Spa & Salon required advanced software to support the complexity of its policies; however, the management team didn't have time to learn a complicated system. Built provided the customer service Laura and Leah needed to find a time management system that could simplify its time tracking operation.

"We picked Built because the customer service was great, and receiving information on the product was instantaneous. I am one of those people that when I need to get something done, I want to do it now, because I may not have the time later."   - Laura

As a mom and business owner, Laura's time is valuable. Built eliminated the additional piles of paperwork, allowing Laura and Leah more time to focus on providing a career path of growth for their team through the building of a positive work environment.

"Built saves us a significant amount of time every month going from doing it all handwritten to digitally. I can't even put a time amount to it, but it's a lot of time!"   - Laura

Photo courtesy of Celebrity Spa & Salon