Female talent is the pillar of global beauty industry

The beau­ty indus­try is worth £17 bil­lion to the UK econ­o­my and employs more than a mil­lion peo­ple, pre­dom­i­nant­ly women. Jobs are cre­at­ed across all sec­tors for man­u­fac­tur­ers, sci­en­tists, exec­u­tives, mar­keters, accoun­tants, beau­ti­cians and more.

Over 620,000 busi­ness­es in the UK are owned by women, many with­in the beau­ty indus­try, and it is pre­dict­ed that by 2025 women will account for 60 per cent of all per­son­al wealth. How­ev­er, else­where in busi­ness only 17 per cent of FTSE 100 direc­tors are women and 36 per cent of finance asso­ciates.

The beau­ty employ­ment mar­ket is cer­tain­ly var­ied with many women start­ing on the shop, office or salon floor. Sophie Ford, 23, a trainee hair­dress­er at Tai Hair & Beau­ty salon in Hove, says: “There are more women in beau­ty because women under­stand beau­ty. I chose hair­dress­ing as talk­ing to dif­fer­ent peo­ple appealed to me, rather than being at a desk and speak­ing to the same peo­ple every day. Plus I live at home so can afford to live on an apprentice’s wage. But I have a trade and qual­i­fi­ca­tions that I can trav­el the world with.”

Anoth­er indus­try new­bie Rosie Sax­coburg, 22, junior account man­ag­er, says: “I’m for­tu­nate to be one of those peo­ple who loves what they do. It’s def­i­nite­ly a female- dom­i­nat­ed indus­try, but in my expe­ri­ence this has only proven to be a sup­port­ive and encour­ag­ing envi­ron­ment.”

Navigating beauty employment

The first sur­vey of its kind by CEW (Cos­met­ic Exec­u­tive Women), a pro­fes­sion­al organ­i­sa­tion with more than 1,000 mem­bers in the UK beau­ty indus­try, and recruit­ment con­sul­tan­cy 24 Sev­en pro­vides infor­ma­tion to help job seek­ers and hir­ers nav­i­gate the beau­ty employ­ment mar­ket.

It is impor­tant to grow your own tal­ent and sup­port their devel­op­ment in order to pro­mote a career pro­gres­sion in the busi­ness

Car­o­line Neville, pres­i­dent of CEW, says the sur­vey for the UK Beau­ty Salary and Job Mar­ket Report was sent to CEW mem­bers at more than 500 com­pa­nies, across all beau­ty dis­ci­plines, as well as to 24 Seven’s net­work of beau­ty tal­ent.

So what did the sur­vey find among employ­ees? Bring­ing home more mon­ey was the top rea­son for work­er dis­sat­is­fac­tion, but on aver­age beau­ty indus­try employ­ees in new jobs did get up to 12 per cent pay increas­es. Respon­dents also said they seek out employ­ers who pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment, opti­mal growth poten­tial and clear career direc­tion. Plus two in three cur­rent­ly employed beau­ty pro­fes­sion­als are plan­ning a job move in the next 12 months.

Bev­er­ley Rad­ford, vice pres­i­dent of exec­u­tive search and glob­al accounts at 24 Sev­en, com­ments: “As 60 per cent of those in the sur­vey want train­ing and 54 per cent active­ly look for train­ing, this means it is a big part of staff reten­tion. Com­pa­nies can look to do a lot of staff skills devel­op­ment with­out a huge invest­ment and this is much cheap­er than re-hir­ing.”

Gill Smith, man­ag­ing direc­tor of The Per­fume Shop, also feels train­ing is para­mount and says of the sur­vey find­ings: “It is impor­tant to grow your own tal­ent and sup­port their devel­op­ment in order to pro­mote a career pro­gres­sion in the busi­ness.”

Annie Mur­phy, com­mer­cial direc­tor of Boots UK, agrees with Ms Rad­ford that dig­i­tal­ly skilled can­di­dates are in big demand. “We are recruit­ing quite heav­i­ly in a num­ber of beau­ty areas. How­ev­er, the great­est need has been with­in dig­i­tal and omnichan­nel, as well as brand devel­op­ment.”

Female-dominated

Male­ka Dat­tu, own­er of Meru­maya Skin­care

Susan Harmsworth, 70, the founder of ESPA, thinks the best teams include men and women. “I feel strong­ly about women and empow­er­ing women, but you don’t get all those hor­mones run­ning amok if you include men,” she says. Of ESPA employ­ees, 75 per cent are female and are in a train­ing and devel­op­ment role, spa design and store staff, with men most­ly in IT, accounts, man­u­fac­tur­ing and logis­tics.

Janet Saun­ders, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Clin­ique, Darphin and Ori­gins at Estée Laud­er, says the nature of the indus­try tends to attract women. “In Clin­ique, we have a fan­tas­tic track record of employ­ing women and offer­ing career devel­op­ment, which allows peo­ple to move from the counter to the board,” she says. “We don’t have quo­tas in senior lead­er­ship posi­tions, but in the UK we have a 100 per cent female lead­er­ship team. Clin­ique also has leave for fer­til­i­ty treat­ments, as well as mater­ni­ty, pater­ni­ty and child-adop­tion poli­cies.”

Noel­la Gabriel, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Elemis

Male­ka Dat­tu, own­er of Meru­maya Skin­care, says: “Women are big­ger users of cos­met­ics and have a greater under­stand­ing of the emo­tion­al con­nec­tion that needs to be made with the cus­tomer. Women are gen­er­al­ly bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tors too.” But she con­cedes: “There are few part-time jobs in man­age­ment, crèche facil­i­ties or allowances.”

Ms Harmsworth adds: “It cre­ates more dis­con­tent if col­leagues run out the door at 5pm to attend to chil­dren and you have to be care­ful with an inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny that you don’t end up with every­one part time or on job shares.”

Noel­la Gabriel, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Elemis, where 91 per cent of staff are female, sums up why women are in the lead: “Women are very pow­er­ful and run the indus­try – we under­stand what women want, and the process of age­ing and matu­ri­ty. We know what the demands on the skin are for women. We come from a knowl­edge­able place and we are good lis­ten­ers.”