The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, enlisted the help of The Professional Beauty Associate (PBA) to create a roadmap for reopening the state’s professional beauty industry.
According to PBA, the organization has served as a dynamic resource to the stare of California since the beginning of the pandemic by providing real stories from more than 900 PBA members, meaningful data and analytics, and photos.
Effective Monday, August 31, 2020, a tiered county reopening program has been instituted, in which salons and barbershops can open indoors following new guidelines, and nail and esthetician services can open according to a county-specific, four-tiered program. PBA will continue to collaborate with the governor's office to support this reopening roll-out.
In addition, PBA previously crafted a series of Recommended Guidelines for salons and spas to follow including increased sanitization measures, installing plexiglass or acrylic partitions, removing coffee and amenity stations, imparting electronic-only transactions, requiring face masks, staggered appointments and waiting in cars, having clients show up with clean hair, and more. The PBA will also be announcing a new Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) STAR accreditation program in association with GBAC and ISSE. GBAC is the cleaning industry’s only outbreak prevention, response and recovery accreditation for facilities, which institutes the highest level of sanitization standardization.
Steve Sleeper, executive director of PBA, said, “By engaging early and often, and working with the state of California, we were able to ensure the professional representation of our PBA members. Now that California is going back to work, the PBA will maintain its collaboration with the state, offering data, member stories, and further insights—ensuring that the professional beauty industry continues to be represented moving forward.”
Myra Reddy, PBA’s director of government affairs shared, “We’ve made steps in the right direction, I am thankful for the trust our PBA members placed in us to share their personal stories and engage with ongoing conversations with the California Governor’s office to allow us to collaborate in a way that created a change in the right direction.”
Reddy added, “We have worked tirelessly with our membership and I remain grateful for their calls, emails, and outreach. Beyond our collaborative efforts, PBA worked to ensure our California members felt empowered—their advocacy efforts collectively created change’ this movement is about them.”
