Health care? These jobs come with hair care

By Catey Hill

Typically, employees dread the day their company starts making cuts. Not so at the handful of firms offering on-site hair salon services.

About 1% of companies offer on-site haircuts for employees, according to a survey released this year by the Society for Human Resource Management, with more saying they planned to add the service in the coming year. Many of them are Silicon Valley employers like Genentech, Yahoo, Nvidia and Google. Though employees must usually pay for these dos, employers will sometimes subsidize the cuts or offer a day where they are free. ?We do it because we want to deliver convenience for employees,? says Lisa Slater, a spokesperson for Genentech, which offers the service to employees three days a week.

At least one company, Onsite Haircuts, works with employers to bring hair stylists to employees at the office. The company has large Winnebagos and vans retrofitted as salons, that it parks outside the office. In the past two years, the company expanded its fleet from three van-salons to five, and says it now services between 850 and 1,000 people each month. Onsite Haircuts charges about $1.20 a minute, with its average cut taking just over 20 minutes.

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Emily Harris, one of the owners of the company, says that about 70% of her customers are men and tend to be people who ?look at getting their haircut as a chore, like doing their laundry or washing dishes ? they want to have it done well, but don?t want to spend a lot of time getting it done.? Most of the requested cuts are basics like a buzzcut or simple trim, though Harris says, ?sometimes someone wants a mohawk or fauxhawk.? (We?re guessing someone had a bad day at work.)

To be sure, it?s likely not your boss?s concern with your hairdo that motivates him or her to bring stylists to the workplace. Good benefits promote employee retention: According to a 2012 study by Metlife, some 61% of employees who were very satisfied with their benefits said they felt a strong sense of loyalty to their employer vs. just 24% of employees who were dissatisfied with their benefits. In addition, reducing turnover saves the employer money: A study by the Center for American Progress found that the median cost to replace an employee is 21% of the person?s salary (so it would cost a company a median of $15,750 to replace an employee making $75,000). Plus, generous workplace benefits can actually increase productivity, other studies have found.

No wonder experts expect the number of companies offering perks like onsite haircuts to grow. ?Now that we are coming out of the recession, we are going to see companies focusing more and more on keeping and recruiting top talent and getting creative to do it,? says Evren Esen, manager of the Society for Human Resource Management?s Survey Research Center.

Not all employers like the haircut perk, however. ?Compared to other perks like on-site car washes and our free gym, the haircut service was the least popular among employees and was rarely used, so we just recently discontinued that service,? writes Ryan Batty, the director of corporate communications for San Jose-based tech company Polycom. And for employees looking for a high-end salon experience, an on-site cut can have its limits: ?We aren?t trying to be a high-end salon,? says Onsite Haircut?s Harris. ?We aren?t a steakhouse but we aren?t McDonald?s, we?re going for In & Out: quick, consistent and good.?

Still, other companies say that employees like the on-site haircuts. Slater says that at Genentech, employee feedback on the program has been positive and that people use the service. Hector Marinez, a spokesperson for Santa Clara, Calif.-based tech company Nvidia, says the same is true at his company, adding that employees like perks like this because they?re ?very convenient? since you don?t have to leave the office to get them done. See also: 10 things your co-worker won?t tell you.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B4C575BAE-0F59-11E3-B648-002128040CF6%7D&siteid=rss&rss=1

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