News

UNI Europa Hair and Beauty and its Social Partner Coiffure EU, have validated and the European Online Interactive Risk Assessment (OiRA) Tool for the Hairdressing sector. Risk assessment in the workplace is key to protecting the health and safety of workers and reducing occupational accidents. Unfortunately, many micro, small and medium-sized enterprises do not have the resources to carry out effective occupational risk-assessment, to the detriment of their employees’ well-being. Therefore, with the support from EU-OSHA, UNI Europa Hair and Beauty worked with Coiffure EU to develop the tool for the hairdressing sector.

Content of the tool

The OiRA Tool for Hairdressing consists of 7 modules:

1 Hairdressing cosmetics

2 Skin protection

3 Layout & maintenance of the salon

4 Furniture & work posture

5 Hairdressing equipment & clothing

6 Mental health & wellbeing

7 Personnel & prevention

To access the tool, please click here. In order to receive a login and password to use the tool, you need to register first. This registration is free of charge.

Please click here to go directly to the OiRA registration page.

The content of this European tool is intended to give input for the adaptation of the OiRA tool to national law and practice by national social partners of the sector. Interested partners should contact their relevant national institute or authority. This can be done directly or via the European Agency for Health and Safety.

In most hairdressing salons, everything is geared around the client. Sometimes hairdressers disregard their own health, leading to health problems such as hairdresser eczema or wrist, neck and shoulder complaints. This often forces them, even while still very young, to abandon the profession. The Hairdressing OiRA tool can assist:

To keep the workers healthy and motivated, employers may need to identify the risks in order to address them in a suitable way by taking appropriate preventive measures.

This is not only a legal obligation, in accordance with European, national or local laws or in accordance with applicable collective labour agreements. Paying extra attention to staff‘s health is worthwhile and pays off. Staff members fall ill less, and there is less staff turnover.

OiRA is easy to use

It offers support to conduct the risk assessment in a hairdressing salon.
It provides adequate proven control and prevention measures. You can select what is applicable to your specific situation.
It encourages to choose measures and set up an action plan based on the identified risks and the respective measures.
The action plan includes the possibility to add responsibilities, deadlines and allocated budget.
The whole risk assessment report as well as the action plan  can be downloaded and printed for documentation
The risk assessment can be repeated based on former assessments and can be adapted easily.

Background on OiRA

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) developed the OiRA tool with the aim of facilitating risk assessment and is intended for micro and small European organisations in various sectors. The OiRA tools are freely available and are promoted amongst the agency’s national OiRA partners, which are mainly Ministries and Labour Inspectorates.

For further information please click here.

Next steps

UNI Europa Hair & Beauty is promoting the tool and would like to encourage its member organisations to get involved in national endeavours with national social partners to adapt it accordingly.

For further information, please contact the policy officer responsible for the UNI Europa Hair & Beauty sector, Dimitris Theodorakis: dimitris.theodorakis@uniglobalunion.org