Achievements ABIC

CREATION OF A REPRESENTATIVE BODY

• Creation of the ABIC Council
• Assigning of a board of Directors
• Establishment of a not-for-profit organisation
• Development of strong constitution, and legally sound framework
• Creation of an advisory committee with diverse industry and non-industry professionals to help guide the direction of ABIC initiatives

CONNECTION WITH GOVERNMENT

• We fought for change to unfair and unrealistic regulations impacting our industry, and demonstrated the level of influence that ABIC is having for our industry with government
• Directly responsible for overturning mandated mask-wearing that prevented facial treatments
• Directly responsible for roadmap changes to ensure beauty & aesthetics would open in line (or even prior to) hairdressing and retail
• Powerful government connections established by ABIC, improving our future prospects

COMMUNITY AND INDUSTRY COLLABORATION

• Established a new direction for the industry that encourages collaboration as opposed to competition, and worked towards uniting all facets of beauty, dermal, and aesthetic medical so that we may achieve more together
• Successfully united foundation members, who previously would have considered one another 'competitors’, in the spirit of industry prosperity and a united front

INDUSTRY SUPPORT

• Financial support gathered for industry professionals and businesses in need, raising $55,000 to help businesses and individuals through difficult financial times by providing groceries and needed essentials
• Established a free hotline of facilitators to support anyone in need of mental, financial or business support
• Helped hundreds of businesses and their staff by providing COVID-related advice directly from experts, but also simple (but much-needed) emotional support for the difficulties of day-to-day life in a pandemic
• Established a HR advice platform to provide member support regarding complex staffing and business issues that surrounded COVID, reopening, vaccination mandates, etc.

INFORMATION AND GUIDANCE

• The industry looked to ABIC to provide advice, guidance, and expert-sourced information as the pandemic continued to develop. ABIC was providing this all day every day throughout COVID, ensuring the most up-to-date and correct information for operating business within the law
• Social media, newsletters, blogs, live streams, and ABIC’s website are updated multiple times a day, 7 days per week, so the industry knows it can rely on ABIC to provide accurate, unbiased news as it happened
• The most informed and knowledgeable facilitators, government representatives, industry experts, and legal counsel were on hand regularly to answer industry questions and provide guidance - including ABIC council members as well as independent experts that ABIC sought externally
• Educational lives were hosted weekly by industry experts and the experienced ABIC council members

CHANGE AND ADVANCEMENT

• Government education was one of ABIC’s primary goals for this year. As a result, respect and understanding for our industry has grown (and will continue to do so) by educating and informing government representatives about the intricacies, operations, and correcting misunderstandings within beauty, aesthetics and personal care
• This has been achieved by consistent representation, and verbal and written communication to government as well as other sectors of aesthetics and healthcare
• ABIC established strong alliances with education providers AACDS, Elly Lukas and other leading education providers along with SKILLS IQ, ITAB the IRC's, in order to affect positive change in the industry’s education and training packages
• ABIC begun preparations for the establishment of a plan to create a national self-regulation framework for aesthetics. This plan will be put together and announced in early 2022 with the aim of establishing a working framework by the end of 2024

FUTURE INITIATIVES

• Currently we are fighting against the proposed revocation of the Diploma of Beauty Therapy - we need as many new ABIC members as possible to grow in numbers and prevent this from happening.
• We have begun the process for formalised beauty apprenticeships in New South Wales and Victoria in 2022
• We will be advocating for self-regulation in 2022, and have already begun the process to do so
• We will be introducing the ABIC national certification in 2022
• We hope to host our first Virtual Education event in March 2022