Hiring the right team is key to building a successful massage therapy business. Start by defining your workplace culture, services, and goals to attract the right candidates. Create clear job descriptions, contracts, and policies to set expectations and ensure legal compliance. A thoughtful hiring process, along with consistent management and communication, helps foster a professional, supportive environment for both staff and clients.
Key Takeaways
- Clarify the type of experience you want to create for clients and staff to attract like-minded team members.
- Outline duties, qualifications, and expectations in writing to avoid misunderstandings and ensure accountability.
- Employment or independent contractor agreements help protect both parties and clarify compensation, roles, and responsibilities.
- Implement structured interviews, license verification, and background checks to ensure quality and professionalism.
- A comprehensive policies-and-procedures manual helps maintain consistency, legal compliance, and team alignment.
Whether you are an established practitioner or still a student, you may have pondered the idea of hiring others to work for you in your current or future business.
Regardless of who you plan to employ—other massage therapists, estheticians, receptionists, or an office manager—you have planning to do, policies to create, and practices to put in place.
Though the following is not an exhaustive list of all the steps you can take to create an effective and efficient workplace, it does cover some of the most important factors in assembling a team and hiring them to work in your business.
Though every business is different, having a clear idea and shared understanding of your business environment, structure, and goals is key to success. This will not only help safeguard your business, staff, and clients but will also help create the best possible outcomes for and relationships with your future team.
Understand Your Culture
Before bringing anyone into your workplace, it’s important to know what experience you as a team or group intend to create for yourselves, your clients, and your community. Though these do not directly relate to hiring practices, the unique facets of your business do affect your team and who will be interested in working with you and your clientele.
Some possibilities to consider:
• Types of services (pain relief, pampering, special occasion-focused)
• Professional Environment (clinical, retreat or resort, wellness center, mobile, co-op)
• Pricing (luxury, mid-range, membership, value, pro bono)
Determine Job Description and Duties
First and foremost, as an employer, it is important to have clarity about the position(s) you are hiring for; the duties to be performed in each role, and the qualities or credentials required of applicants to be considered for hire.
This information should be in written form as a job description and communicated to potential candidates before they are hired to ensure they understand the job and are able to perform the duties assigned to it.
Mandatory items such as licensing, insurance, specialized training or certifications, and schedule requirements should be spelled out clearly. Nothing should be discriminatory but instead pertain directly to what is required to do the job. (For more information about workplace rights and to get a free “Know Your Rights Poster, visit eeoc.gov/poster.)
A listing of the expected day-to-day duties shares the most common aspects of the job. However, adding a phrase such as “assist other team members when asked” or “perform other duties as needed” can be a helpful catch-all for requests that fall outside of the norm.
A printed or digital copy of the job description should be signed at the time of hire to show all parties understand the performance expectations of the job. This helps avoid misunderstandings and is a helpful reference tool whenever questions about performance and responsibilities arise. It can also be used to create a list of criteria to be evaluated in performance reviews.
Recruiting and Advertising
Once your job description is complete, it can be used to help create job listings, ads, or social media postings. However, job postings may contain more current or individualized information to help fill specific gaps in your schedule or specialties/modalities such as chair massage, outcall service,s or prenatal massage.
Posting on such job sites as Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter can be helpful, but it may be easier to connect with more qualified candidates through your personal contacts, current team members, local schools, and clients. Sharing information about open positions via local or regional social media groups for massage therapists and your own website are other options to get the word out about an open position.
Employee Agreements
Though many larger employers use one or more agreements with employees, such as employment contracts or non-compete agreements, this is not something smaller employers seem to use as often.
However, like job descriptions, written employment agreements and contracts spell out all the details of what is expected from both parties and can be extremely helpful if a dispute ever arises. You should have an attorney review employment-related contracts and documents before you begin using them to make sure everything written is legal in your state.
Whether you decide to use a contract or not, it can be helpful for any size employer to use a written document which outlines key details related to each employee such as services provided the therapist; hourly rate, service fees, commission pay or salary; work schedule; retail sales commissions; and other benefits.
If you work with independent contractors—meaning, at least in part, those staff members who control their own schedule, hours, uniform, marketing and supplies, and whose work you do not direct in any way—you will want to have an independent contractor agreement that outlines the details.
These include: space used; fees, rents, or commissions due per service, session, day or week; cost of any supplies or cooperative marketing; referral fees or commissions; how and when commissions or fees will be paid and collected; and the length of the agreement. Most independent contractor agreements can be ended at will, but having this information spelled out in the contract will keep everyone on the same page.
This article is not meant to suggest that massage therapy professionals should or should not work with or as independent contractors. Check here for guidelines on what the IRS says about independent contractors. Check your state’s laws and regulations for more details on how to be in compliance where you live and work.
What’s Your Policy?
If you employ people, you must have a policies-and-procedures manual to make sure all your employees are working from the same playbook. This manual will help streamline your internal processes and will offer a counterpoint to any employee claiming they did not understand how to behave in your workplace.
These are some of the key policies to have in your manual:
• What constitutes harassment and sexual harassment in the workplace
• What constitutes inappropriate conduct by clients or staff
• Draping training
• No touch/no tolerance zones
• Professional behavior policies
• An explanation of at-will employment
• Grounds for termination
• Benefits
• Orientation
• Training
• Supervision practices
• Ending employment
Standards for Hiring Massage Therapists
One of the most crucial things you can do to hire a great team is to have a strong hiring process. While the steps below are specifically for vetting hands-on practitioners due to the intimate nature of massage and spa services, it is perfectly acceptable to require the same steps for evaluating candidates for your entire staff (less the practical license and insurance checks for those not performing services).
• Collect and review resume/application;
• Conduct a verbal interview (preferably by the owner, manager and/or massage lead or manager);
• Conduct a practical massage interview (preferably by an experienced massage therapist or lead);
• Verify the candidate’s massage therapy license is valid.
• Verify candidate’s professional liability insurance (if applicable) and require your company be added as an additional insured upon hire;
• Verify past employment dates and rehire eligibility;
• Contact professional references and get positive responses;
• Conduct a criminal background check and Sex Offender Registry Search. In some cases, this is waived if the therapist is newly licensed (12 months or less) in the state where they are practicing if a background check was done as part of the licensing process. However, a more common and better practice is for employers to conduct an independent background check and to repeat the background check annually.
With sexual misconduct complaints and other massage-related lawsuits continuing to occur, more employers are choosing to go beyond the steps above by:
• Pre-interview or previewing job descriptions for candidates, so the candidates have a very clear idea of what the job entails
• Verifying application or resume for total accuracy and completeness
• Documenting verbal interview questions and answers, including red flags, in writing
• Documenting practical interview and performance
• Printing proof of online license verification
• Calling licensing board to verify website is accurate, no current complaints are pending or being investigated
• Requiring multiple positive professional references and documenting in writing
• Verifying employment history and checking re-hire eligibility
• Searching Google and social media sites for potential red flags
• Requiring team or roundtable verbal interviews, multiple practical interviews, office skills/communications testing • Some employers choose to limit the areas massage therapists touch on their clients beyond what is expressed in licensing guidelines and other industry standards. For example, this could mean not allowing abdominal or glute massage.
Compensation
Before you begin hiring, there are other preparations to have in place, such as knowing how much and when you will pay staff members. Compensation is too large a topic to address here in much detail. In short, it is important to know how much you can afford to pay as well as what is a fair wage for your team to determine compensation before you start interviewing.
Starting out, you may not be able to afford the highest pay or traditional benefits like health insurance or paid vacations. However, if you focus on being a great boss and creating a great workplace with a positive company culture, people will want to be a part of it. If you represent the job and company accurately, respect everyone who works with you and follow through on the commitments and promises you make to your team, you will attract a good team and grow toward adding those options in the future.
Whatever you pay, you will need to determine a definite schedule of paydays—twice a month feels right to me—before hiring. It is also important to have a payroll or accounts payable system in place as well as all tax withholding processes.
In my first business, I tried doing this myself and became quickly overwhelmed. I highly recommend using a payroll company to make this easy and virtually error-free. It is worth every penny to avoid the stress and costs of doing it incorrectly.
Think and Plan
It takes thought and planning to successfully hire and manage a team in your massage therapy business. Getting clarity on the workplace you want to create will help you attract and keep the right team!
About the Author
Felicia Brown, LMT, LMBT, is the president of Spalutions, a firm that provides business and marketing coaching and consulting for massage, spa and wellness professionals. She is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and NCBTMB/FL/GA Approved Continuing Education Provider.
