ASSISTANT SPA MANAGER — FRONT OF HOUSE & CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Honey Skincare Studio | Arlington, Virginia
Full-Time | On-Site | Leadership Position
ABOUT HONEY SKINCARE STUDIO
Honey Skincare Studio is an award-winning boutique medical spa in Arlington, VA, specializing in corrective skincare, medical-grade facials, advanced laser treatments, and injectables—combining clinical expertise with a highly personalized, elevated client experience.
Our mission is rooted in delivering exceptional results while creating a space where clients feel genuinely cared for and confident in their skin. Behind that experience is a team committed to growth, education, initiative, and excellence.
As Honey continues to grow, we are looking for a strong, hands-on leader who can help us raise that standard even further.
ABOUT THE POSITION
We are seeking an Assistant Spa Manager to take meaningful ownership of our front-of-house operation, develop our team, strengthen systems, and elevate the client experience from first contact through checkout and follow-up.
This is a highly visible, hands-on leadership role— this is not a position managed from behind a desk. You will work alongside the team, observe operations in real time, coach employees, solve problems, and ensure Honey’s standards are consistently executed.
A major priority will be rebuilding and elevating our front desk operation into a polished, knowledgeable, accountable, and highly effective client-experience team. For the right candidate, this role offers significant growth potential as Honey continues to expand.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
FRONT-OF-HOUSE LEADERSHIP & CLIENT EXPERIENCE
- Own the day-to-day performance of Honey’s front-of-house operation.
- Maintain a consistent presence at the front desk and throughout the studio.
- Stay actively aware of schedules, staffing, provider flow, consultations, VIP clients, client concerns, and daily priorities.
- Direct front desk activity, identify issues early, and ensure responsibilities are completed accurately and on time.
- Maintain calm, confident leadership during high-volume periods, scheduling disruptions, staffing challenges, and client escalations.
- Define and uphold a client experience that feels warm, polished, personal, attentive, and highly professional.
- Coach employees on communication, confidence, body language, attentiveness, discretion, and anticipating client needs.
- Identify recurring friction in the client journey and improve the underlying process rather than repeatedly correcting individual mistakes.
FRONT DESK REBUILD, SYSTEMS & SOPs
- Evaluate current front desk systems, workflows, team capabilities, communication, and service standards to identify gaps and opportunities.
- Create and maintain a comprehensive Front-of-House Manual and SOPs.
- Standardize expectations around phone/text/email communication, scheduling, booking accuracy, deposits, check-in/out, rebooking, memberships, packages, retail, waitlists, cancellations, follow-up, provider handoffs, inventory, and escalation protocols.
- Continuously refine workflows and systems as Honey’s services, technology, policies, and business needs evolve.
PHONE CONVERSION, REBOOKING & RETENTION
- Develop a front desk communication strategy that converts qualified inquiries into consultations and appointments.
- Train employees to understand client concerns, establish trust, identify the appropriate next step, and confidently guide conversations toward booking.
- Develop natural, elevated scripts and frameworks for calls, objections, consultation positioning, and follow-up.
- Regularly review calls and client communication and coach employees on warmth, confidence, service knowledge, and missed opportunities.
- Strengthen rebooking, memberships, packages, retail support, treatment-plan follow-up, waitlist recovery, and lapsed-client outreach.
- Ensure sales conversations remain educational and client-centered rather than pressured.
- Track meaningful KPIs including lead response, inquiry conversion, consultations booked, missed-call recovery, rebooking, retention, memberships, reviews, and follow-up completion.
TEAM LEADERSHIP, TRAINING & ACCOUNTABILITY
- Directly lead, supervise, coach, and develop Honey’s front desk team.
- Set clear expectations around professionalism, urgency, accuracy, attendance, reliability, teamwork, client care, sales support, and follow-through.
- Provide real-time coaching and conduct regular one-on-ones and performance conversations.
- Address underperformance directly and professionally while recognizing and developing high-performing employees.
- Take an active role in recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and training front desk employees.
- Build structured onboarding using training modules, checklists, role-play, service education, call evaluations, and competency sign-offs.
- Retrain and develop employees as Honey’s services, standards, technology, and priorities evolve.
CULTURE & TEAM DEVELOPMENT
- Build a positive, energetic, supportive, and accountable front-of-house culture.
- Encourage direct, respectful communication and address negativity, poor communication, work avoidance, and recurring accountability issues promptly.
- Develop thoughtful recognition, incentives, team challenges, and celebrations tied to meaningful performance and development goals.
- Lead by example and consistently model the professionalism, initiative, energy, and client care expected from the team.
OPERATIONS & LEADERSHIP SUPPORT
- Maintain strong communication and coordination between the front desk, providers, and leadership.
- Ensure the team understands provider specialties, schedules, preferences, treatment requirements, and booking rules.
- Help resolve issues involving scheduling, client flow, preparation, handoffs, checkout, and follow-up.
- Track and report front desk performance, client-experience trends, and operational opportunities.
- Lead daily huddles and structured team meetings with clear priorities, accountability, and follow-through.
- Support front-of-house inventory, retail presentation, client amenities, and overall studio standards.
- Assist leadership with special projects and broader operational initiatives.
QUALIFICATIONS
- 3–5+ years of management / leadership experience in a fast-paced, client-facing environment.
- Proven experience supervising, coaching, training, scheduling, and developing employees.
- Demonstrated ability to improve front desk, hospitality, retail, practice, client-service, or operational systems.
- Strong leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, organization, urgency, and follow-through.
- Comfortable setting clear expectations and holding employees accountable.
- Comfortable with KPIs, sales, memberships, packages, rebooking, retention, and performance goals.
- Ability to build SOPs, training systems, scripts, checklists, workflows, and quality-control processes.
- Strong technology aptitude and ability to learn scheduling, CRM, POS, communication, and reporting systems.
- Professional, polished demeanor with strong judgment and discretion.
- Ability to remain calm, decisive, and solutions-oriented in a high-volume environment.
Preferred: Leadership experience in medical aesthetics, healthcare, wellness, dermatology, plastic surgery, dental, luxury hospitality, premium retail, fitness, or another high-touch service environment. Experience rebuilding or significantly elevating a front desk or client-experience team is especially valuable.
THE IDEAL CANDIDATE
- A highly visible, hands-on leader who thrives on the studio floor.
- Warm and supportive while direct and comfortable holding people accountable.
- Naturally proactive and willing to step in wherever needed.
- Energized by developing employees, improving systems, and raising standards.
- Commercially aware and understands the importance of conversion, rebooking, retention, memberships, and client loyalty.
- Organized, decisive, adaptable, and solutions-oriented.
- Comfortable taking meaningful ownership without requiring constant direction.
- Motivated by seeing measurable improvement as a direct result of their leadership.
This role may not be the right fit if you prefer a traditional office-management position, primarily managing from behind a desk, or are uncomfortable with coaching, difficult conversations, sales and performance metrics, weekend work, or direct accountability.
SCHEDULE
- Full-time, on-site leadership position; not remote or hybrid.
- Night and weekend availability is required.
- Exact schedule will be based on studio coverage and leadership needs.
- Flexibility for trainings, events, staffing needs, and business priorities is required.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
- Salary starting at $60,000+, based on relevant leadership experience, management scope, operational capability, and overall fit.
- Opportunity for salary growth and performance-based compensation.
- Health, dental, and vision insurance for eligible full-time employees.
- Paid time off & employee discounts.
- Significant opportunity for advancement into broader studio operations or multi-location leadership.
HOW TO APPLY
- Only applicants who complete our online application form will be considered.
- Apply at: honeyskincarestudio.com/about/job-application/
- Questions may be sent to [email protected].
We are looking for someone energized by developing people, creating systems, raising standards, and seeing measurable progress as a direct result of their leadership.
Pay: From $60,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Work Location: In person
