Comprehensive Therapist Onboarding is Vital to Keeping Spas and Clients Safe
June 6, 2025
When a spa organization hires a massage therapist, there are several steps to screen for predatory behavior. As described previously in other blogs, there must be a robust interview process that includes many challenging red-flag questions. There are also license checks, reference checks, and background checks, but one of the most important screening methods occurs in the onboarding training process. Unfortunately, most organizations skip a robust onboarding process because they are desperate to hire new therapists since there aren’t that many available, but comprehensive therapist onboarding is vital to keeping spas and clients safe.
Teaching Ethics
Organizations that hire massage therapists cannot rely on a practitioner’s massage school education to provide sufficient ethics training. Most schools spend very little time on ethics, ethical behavior, ethical decision-making, self-accountability, and so forth. Teaching people about ethics in a massage context takes at least 30 to 50 hours of training. It should include training in boundaries, communication skills, and sexuality. In my school, the Muscular Therapy Institute, we devoted at least 100 hours to the subjects. These days, massage therapists are hired directly out of school with very little experience or the practical application of their skills.
Live Ethics Training
Live ethics training tells you a lot more about the practitioner – their boundaries, their judgment, and so forth. Having a video on ethics is a good start, but it is insufficient to make sure that a predator therapist has not slipped through your screening process. The only way to really teach ethics is through live interaction, working through ethical decision-making problems, role plays of difficult situations, and discussions after each of these activities. For example, to learn about how to deal with sexual arousal in a man you need to enact what will actually happen. You have somebody on the table acting as the client with a pen under the sheet to represent an erection. The therapist goes through multiple steps to discern if the person is having a physiological reaction or if they have sexual intent. These role-plays often take 20 to 30 minutes of coaching for each practitioner. You can’t just tell a therapist what to do if this happens. This is a scary and difficult occurrence for most therapists and they need to practice in a role play in order to learn how to respond.
Role-Plays Are Key
Massage therapists are frequently faced with challenging ethical situations. Clients ask you out to coffee, out on a date, or invite you to an art opening. Some clients want to give you gifts, like a week at their country house, or invite you to the theater or become your friend. Entering into these dual relationships is unethical, but negotiating this in a kind and professional manner is challenging without practice and training. Most therapists do not get this training in school, so they can become confused and tempted to step over the line if they don’t have strongly developed boundaries.
Actually role-playing all of these scenarios is how you train people. If they have great difficulty setting boundaries in these role-plays, you know they are going to more than likely have a problem as an employee dealing with an aggressive or persistent client.
Boundaries and Attitudes Become Evident
In my massage school, which I oversaw for 30 years, we would discover all sorts of things in our communications and ethics classes at the very beginning of the student’s training. We would learn that one student was a dominatrix who physically abused her clients and another who thought it was OK for consenting adults in a professional relationship to become friends or have sex together. We saw that some participants in the classes had an inability to set boundaries no matter how hard we tried. We counseled all of these students out of our program. Practitioners’ boundaries and attitudes are often revealed when they discuss ethical decision-making cases and do role-plays involving challenging situations.
One important point to keep in mind, though, is that a massage therapist who says they have never been attracted to a client is usually not being truthful. However, professionally trained therapists notice it but don’t act on it. Working on what to do with attraction to clients is another part of the ethics training that should occur before the therapist begins to see clients.
If you’re a lawyer who is currently involved in a sexual assault case and needs an expert witness with a massage or spa background, schedule a conversation with Dr. Benjamin.
Ben E. Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and has been an expert witness in cases of sexual assault in a massage/spa setting since 2004, advising lawyers, testifying in depositions and trials, and writing reports. His expertise extends beyond massage therapy and ethical behavior. He also advises spas, both large and small, on the creation of comprehensive sexual assault prevention strategies that ensure safe and ethical practices in the industry.