Why I went to Brussels – Skin Essentials’ Mariga on salon standards, safety and seafood!
As lots of you are probably aware, I spent last week in Brussels as Irish delegate to the European Beauty Salon Services Standards Group.
This is an initiative that I have been involved in for the last 3 years. The aim of the group is to standardise beauty salon services across Europe to elevate the industry to the benefit of therapists and clients alike.
This process is coming near to an end now and the week of meetings in Brussels was to finalise the wording of the draft standard and try to accommodate the differing concerns of industry professionals across Europe in one harmonising document. I think we made a lot of progress!
On a professional level, I really enjoyed sitting down with so many people who had a common aim of raising standards for all, and the exchange of information and ideas.
But it wasn’t all work, Brussels had some lovely restaurants and craft beer to offer too! The local speciality is mussels and each restaurant has its own variation – delicious 🙂
What will your local salon’s adoption of this standard mean for you, the client?
-Guarantee of standardised treatment quality wherever the standard is adopted.
-Reassurance that the therapist is educated to a high degree and insured to carry out the processes required .
-Confidence in the hygiene and safety practices of the salon.
-Guarantee that only the highest quality, traceable ingredients and products will be used.
-Ability to differentiate between salons that have and have not been awarded European Standard compliance status and therefore recognise those who are excelling in all the above areas.
What does it mean for the salon owner/therapist?
-Recognition and differentiation of those who go over and above basic requirements in education, continuous professional development, safety and hygiene practices, treatment delivery practices and customer care to delivery a service that is the best in the business.
Official title and aims of the standard:
Standard Title & Scope
prEN 16708 Beauty Salon Services – Requirements and recommendations for the provision of service
This European Standard provides requirements and recommendations for the provision of professional beauty salon services.
These services relate to the delivery of beauty treatments regardless of where the service is delivered.
This European Standard provides requirements and recommendations for the delivery of safe beauty treatments performed by a suitably qualified beauty therapist. Recommendations are provided for client management to ensure client safety regarding any beauty treatments. The delivery of beauty salon services is limited to the boundaries of the qualification of the individual beauty therapists obtained through a recognized education provider.
Medical procedures including aesthetic surgical procedures and cosmetic injectable procedures including sclerotherapy are excluded from the scope.
Hairdressing, barbering and body art tattooing services are also excluded from this European Standard.
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