Hair and beauty salon workers are being expected to be quasi therapists, a new report has found, sparking urgent calls for greater systemic support to prevent burnout.
Dr Hannah McCann, from the University of Melbourne, and PhD student Stacey Page, at the University of Adelaide, conducted a series of interviews and surveys involving hundreds of hairdressers, beauticians and salon clients across Australia between 2017 and 2025.
The findings, published in a new report, reveal salon workers provide far more than a technical service, as they're also required to offer informal social and emotional support to their clients.
Dr Hannah McCann said: "Our research has shown salon workers often act as confidants, providing a safe space for clients to disclose personal struggles without fear of judgement.
"While this complimentary therapeutic service has been shown to have profound positive effects on the wellbeing of clients, our research highlights the emotional toll it can take on salon workers who aren't trained to be informal counsellors."
Navigating delicate conversations with vulnerable individuals requires complex social skills.
However, researchers say there is limited support available to salon workers to help them develop this skillset.
Some of the sensitive issues discussed within the trusted environment of a salon include relationship breakdowns, domestic violence, cancer diagnoses, abuse, fertility struggles and depression.
"One of the salon workers interviewed described tending to young terminally ill clients who only had weeks left to live. In some instances, the salon worker was the only human contact these clients had outside of hospital," Dr McCann said.
The report also spotlights how salon workers often don't have time to psychologically process confronting or upsetting interactions with clients, as they typically don't have breaks between appointments due to the fast-paced nature of the job.
"Many of the salon workers interviewed reported feeling ill-prepared to handle some of their client's personal disclosures due to a lack of training," Dr McCann said.
"They also described a clear lack of support in terms of being able to debrief within salon after a challenging appointment. Workers are left to learn how to respond on the job, through a painful process of trial and error."
While there are ad-hoc training programs available to salon workers in Australia that address issues like domestic violence, researchers are lobbying for salon-specific wellbeing training to be included in hair and beauty qualification programs.
"When salon workers don't have clear guidance around how to respond to client disclosures, there is an increased risk that they will say things that have negative consequences, professional boundaries could blurr and workers could take the client's issues "home" with them and experience burnout," Dr McCann said.
