Whether you are working for yourself or for someone else, workplace health and safety is everyone’s responsibility. In New Zealand, the Health and Safety at Work Act (2015) outlines responsibilities and standards for safety in the workplace, with the primary health and safety regulator being WorkSafe. All businesses must abide by these regulations and must have policies, procedures and systems in place to support requirements.
Everyone in the workplace must play their part to ensure our workplaces are safe. This means that as a brow artist, you have a duty of care to your clients, your colleagues and to yourself. WorkSafe has lots of useful information relating to safety in the workplace, and it is a resource you should become familiar with throughout your career.
It is important that you keep up to date with legislation because ‘not knowing’ is not a reasonable defence. With the emergence of the global pandemic, the safety requirements for customer-facing services and roles had a major overhaul with a major focus on hygiene, personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation. While these focus areas have always been important to brow artists, extra measures for all businesses were put in place. Sanitation with regard to brow enhancement services relates to the following:
Your specific duties in accordance with Health and Safety at Work legislation will vary depending on whether or not you are the business owner, a worker or if you employ staff. At a minimum, each of us, as workers, have a legal responsibility to:
If you are not familiar with the Health and Safety at Work legislative framework in New Zealand and would like to learn more, visit WorkSafe’s YouTube channel and watch some of their useful video resources: