Health, Safety, and Security in the Salon and Spa

Subject: Administration and Regulation
Pages: 6
Words: 1552
Reading time:
6 min
Study level: College

Introduction

Hygiene and overall safety of spa salons are critically important due to the fact that customers are vulnerable to a number of dangers. Risk assessment process is an essential part of evaluating the overall cleanliness and safety measures present at the given site. When using a sauna or spa, both personnel and clients should always remember about hygiene. In an environment where humidity and warm air predominate, bacteria and microbes spread very well, and in order to avoid fungi and other unpleasant diseases, it is worth constantly monitoring cleanliness in the steam room itself and the surrounding area.

Health and Hygiene Regulations

When using a spa or a sauna, people must observe certain hygiene rules. Thus, before entering the steam room, clients need to take a shower and wipe themselves, and in the steam room to sit on towels. They need to move around the rooms adjacent to the spa in slippers and take a shower before using the pool. The water in the pool should change every day, as it is quickly polluted, thus, chlorine is widely used as the key disinfectant. In addition, it is highly crucial to conduct constant check-ups in order to maintain a stable level of pH which gets altered throughout a day. Together with human sweat, a huge number of bacteria are released, so the cabin of the sauna or spa should also be thoroughly cleaned (Bloomfield et al., 2016). Cleaning, as a rule, is carried out daily after the end of the spa, but disinfectants should not have a negative reaction. Washing is carried out using a soda and brush, and shelves and adjacent wooden surfaces are cleaned, and then the entire room is washed with water from a hose. The steam room door must be open, and the heating off (Bloomfield et al., 2016). The door should remain open after cleaning until the next day. The cleaning of steam rooms is necessary not only to prevent various skin diseases but also to achieve clean air in the booth during the sessions, which is also quite important for the human body.

Risk Assessment

It is clear that the given spa ‘s most high-risk location is a sauna, where both fire and hygiene regulations must be put in place. Any spa should be kept clean and tidy, and in public saunas, thorough cleaning should be carried out – weekly, daily, weekly, as well as monthly (Bloomfield et al., 2016). The rooms adjacent to the spa should also be clean and well ventilated. Coming to the spa, every individual needs to have a clean towel. Two-color towels, which can be used on different sides in different ways, are perfect for such cases. Thus, on one side, clients will put it on the sauna shelf and sit on the other. All these hygiene rules must be followed so that the spa is beneficial and not harmful to the customers’ bodies. Evidently, the first time they may not feel the benefits that the spa safety and hygiene measures will bring to clients. However, visitors must remember that the beneficial effect of the spa on the body depends on the proper use of it.

Risk Assessment Table.

Hazards Who might be harmed? What should be done? Responsible individuals
Sauna heater Clients who enjoy sauna Fire Safety measures should be applied Sauna manager
Slippery floors Both clients and personnel Rubber carpet or pads should be put on wet floors Head of sauna
Infections Clients using public items Pools should be regularly disinfected with chlorine, common areas should be cleaned, and regular check-ups must be conducted Janitors and pool personnel
Pool pH Clients using the pool pH levels must be constantly checked and regulated in order to keep the value stable Pool personnel
Skin infections from common items Clients Caps, napkins, slippers, broom, washing accessories, such as washcloth should be properly cleaned until its lifecycle ends. New items should replace the old ones whenever necessary. Spa manager

SPA Policies and Practices

The most essential policy and practice revolve around the overall hygienic condition of the rooms. Each month, maintenance personnel must clean the oven filters and polish the steam room shelves. Surface cleaning is carried out using a solution of sodium hypochlorite, and hydrochloric acid is also used when scraping trays (Babrauskas, 2016). Among other things, shelves are bleached using a 10 percent hydrogen peroxide solution. Hygiene is needed so that a person does not become infected with any skin or other diseases. Each individual should be provided with bath kits, such as a cap, napkin, slippers, and broom, and washing accessories, such as washcloth and soap (Babrauskas, 2016). It is especially important that the bath towel is large. It should be laid on shelves so that sitting on a shelf, and legs were on a sheet, sweat, flowing down, fell on a towel. This small but effective measure prevents sweat stains on the surfaces.

Before the first visit to the steam room, it is advisable to rinse, especially if customers were engaged in physical activity. After each visit to the steam room, they need to take a shower, and this is especially important if clients want to be clean and enter the pool. If they rinse in a pond, then, in this case, it is not necessary to take a shower. Any possibility of fire and combustion must be prevented and minimized by implementing a strict set of rules, such as SOP. Also, it is advisable to heat a steam room above 50 C, and in this case, most microbes die (Babrauskas, 2016). The fewer germs in the steam room, the better the hygiene conditions. The steam room should not be overheated above 100 C so that there is no pyrolysis of the wooden lining.

Client Compliance and Record Keeping

The use by companies of personal data of clients is under the scrutiny of the legislator and regulatory authorities. Currently, a fairly wide range of requirements has been established for obtaining customer consent and processing the data received. Many of these requirements are enshrined in by-laws, and it is quite difficult for business entities to track changes made to them. Code of Practice of the United Kingdom Spa Association states that clients should be fully informed about spa etiquette guidelines and health and safety requirements in addition to consensual record keeping and data gathering (Varney, 2016). Moreover, the approach of controlling persons may turn out to be quite formal, which leads to the application of measures of administrative responsibility. In particular, this concerns the transfer of personal data to third parties, as well as their use for marketing purposes (Varney, 2016). Judicial practice in this area is also quite controversial. Therefore, it is important for companies not only to monitor current legislative changes carefully but also to analyze the approaches of the judiciary in order to avoid liability for violation of personal data protection requirements. For the transfer of personal data of the client, his/her direct written consent is required.

Moreover, such protection is implied and is especially important when carrying out the following operations with such data: storage, processing, and transfer. Any activity related to these operations in relation to personal data must be carried out in compliance with the requirements of the Code of Practice. And in case of non-compliance with such conditions, the violator can be brought to administrative responsibility (Varney, 2016). The most widely personal data of individuals is used by credit organizations in relation to which individuals are consumers of the proposed economic products (Smith & Puczko, 2018). Moreover, there are several possible violations of the requirements of the legislation on the protection of personal data by organizations.

Licenses and Employment

The key permits or licenses are related to the overall safety measures and employment opportunities. It is highly critical for a spa salon to possess a regular legal license to conduct a business by employing competent employees in order to preserve all safety measures. Responsible personnel play a major role in ensuring that spa’s health and safety measures are applied and followed both by clients and employees (Varney, 2016). Therefore, it is important to note that employees should be put in an agreement with spa management that the safety guidelines will be kept and strictly adhered. In addition, both new and regular customers must be informed about the spa’s policies and safety measures by written agreements and personnel’s assistance. Any new employee or an intern should have a basic training which will educate the given individual on the key and essential points of health and safety measures.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when defining such agreements, a credit institution risks being held liable, since the transfer of personal data of a borrower to a legal entity that does not have a license to carry out relevant activities may be considered a violation of applicable law. As a rule, the basis for holding a credit institution liable in case of a breach of the requirements of the legislation on the protection of personal data is the lack of written consent of an individual to transfer their personal data. Although, in accordance with the requirements of the legislation, such consent is mandatory and must be expressed in the agreement between the subject and the operator of personal data. Permission must be expressed in writing, be clear and unambiguous.

Reference List

Babrauskas, V. (2016). Temperature calculation in fire safety engineering. Journal of Fire Sciences, 34(6), 530-533.

Bloomfield, S. F., Rook, G. A., Scott, E. A., Shanahan, F., Stanwell-Smith, R., & Turner, P. (2016). Time to abandon the hygiene hypothesis: new perspectives on allergic disease, the human microbiome, infectious disease prevention and the role of targeted hygiene. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 136(4), 550-567.

Smith, J., & Puczko, L. (2018). Health hospitality tourism. London, England: Thompson Press.

Spa education academy. (2018). Web.

Varney, M. (2016). Effective redress of grievance in data protection: An illusion? Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, 23(3), 550-567.