Managing health and safety doesn’t have to be complicated, costly or time-consuming, however it is an important aspect of providing a beauty service. As a beauty professional, you have a duty of care to yourself and your clients.
A client should be able to come to you for any service with complete trust that you will deliver a hygienic and safe practice: whether that be for a tanning, waxing or lash treatment. Here, industry experts serve up some top tips for each service to ensure you offer the optimum in health, hygiene and safety for your clients.
Tanning
Carrie Marsh, sales and training executive for Norvell Tanning, shares her top tips for adhering to hygiene and safety regulations when it comes to bronzing:
- Always provide brand new sticky feet, caps and disposable underwear for each client.
- Always sanitise the spray tent with warm soapy water or antibacterial spray/wipes to sanitise in between each client and also as the floor of the tent can become slippery from excess spray.
- Rinse out your spray gun and dispose of excess solution between each client.
- Ensure all waste is disposed of correctly.
- Ensure your working environment is safe: no hazards for your client to trip over and the spray tent is clean and dry prior to the tan to prevent them slipping over.
- Always ask your client to fill out a consultation card and discuss thoroughly any contraindications that may arise.
Lashes
Ruth Atkins, Salon System educator, shares tips on how to achieve optimum hygiene when carrying out a lash treatment:
- Sanitise your hands using an isopropanol-based sanitiser or similar chlorhexidine gluconate solution.
- Cleanse the client’s eye area thoroughly with an oil-free eye make-up remover.
- Under eye gel patches need to be applied to ensure the lower cases are out of the way. Only at this stage should you open the gel patches from their sealed packet.
- Wear disposable blue nitric medical gloves and a face mask.
- Regardless of tweezer shape, make sure you have several spares and that they are good quality stainless steels as these can be repeatedly sterilised without degradation.
- Glue rings are a great way to ensure you are working on a clean, bacteria-free, disposable surface for each client.
- Ensure that the top of the glue nozzle doesn’t come into direct contact with the glue ring when you dispense your glue into it.
- Dispose of all waste, clean your tweezers with glue remover before sterilising again and return any unused lashes back to their sealed packets.
Waxing
Lisa Stone, Salon System educator, says:
- Complete a full consultation and check for contraindications for waxing (particularly intimate waxing), which will ensure the client is safe to be worked on.
- To help prevent infections, ensure full aftercare advice is given as this is where infections are likely to occur, so it is imperative that your clients are aware of what they can/cannot do.
Beverly Coleman, chartered health & safety practitioner, says:
- Waxing equipment such as spatulas and couch covers should only be used once per client.
- Double-dipping spatulas is a no-no.
- Make sure that electrical equipment such as wax heaters are checked for any cracks or frayed wires, as this can lead to electrical shocks and burns.
For more hygiene and safety tips, keep an eye out for the February issue of Scratch where you’ll find expert advice and product picks for optimum health, hygiene and safety practice whether your salon-based or a mobile tech.
