COVID-19 has forced human kind to reimagine importance of Beauty & Wellness: Monica Bahl, CEO, B&WSSC

Monica Bahl, a service professional with 25+ years of experience in the field of health, beauty, wellness, dermatology and education, is known for her leadership roles involving strategic planning and execution, organisation building (infrastructure & team), P&L management; progressive 13 years of multi-functional experience in business development, operations and sales.
Currently, she is associated with B&WSSC as a CEO. Beauty & Wellness Sector Skill Council is not for profit organization promoted by CII with financial support from NSDC, under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship.
Prior to this, she was working with VLCC as a Senior Vice President for South East Asia. Before that I have handled India
operations for both the VLCC centres & Spa division as well as the Education division.
In an interaction with Indiaretailing, Monica spills the beans on her role as CEO, opportunities during COVID-19 and a lot more…
What’s your role as CEO at B&WSSC?
Beauty & Wellness industry is a highly unorganized sector with outfits at every corner of the country and still counting. This realization, well before time of the need to have many more formally trained professionals to furnish the mammoth growth of this sector, leads to firstly setting standards, which is instrumental in developing the qualification packs for assorted job roles created for the domain. Walking the designated way ahead, enhancing employability of the trained resources by enabling active participation in job fairs is an important foray under consideration. Another facet of importance is the faculty development, supplementing capacity building by way of training of trainers as an ongoing program. This would serve as a supply chain for producing enough faculty members to suffice the current and future faculty requirements, which in turn will support skill competitions such as India Skills competitions, which is a step-up to World Skills competitions.
What is B&WSSC’s goal for this year?
Being a young nation, we are getting ready to reap the benefits of our demographic dividend. Thus, B&WSSC can foresee an urgent need of skill sets enhancement of the potential workforce by moderating and facilitating their transition from an academic to professional life, so as to make ready competent and confident professionals forming a part of Indian and global workforce.
What are some of the challenges you’re up against while reaching this goal?
It is skill and knowledge that are the driving forces of economic and social development of any country. The challenge is not merely of preparing more skilled manpower, but also of ensuring employable skills with a view to fill the skill gaps in the industry. B&WSSC in a systematic and sustained manner is developing the very scaffolding on which our mission shall be achieved. It includes the training partners, assessment agencies and certification of trainers and assessors with a view to build a strong, sustainable, maintainable and a lasting framework for the upliftment of youth and women of our nation.
What are some of the opportunities that’ve come up in the time of COVID-19?
COVID-19 has forced the human kind to reimagine the importance of both Beauty & Wellness, in a 360-degree approach. The importance of sustainable hygiene levels, gathering correct know-how and look out for a correct platform for information on COVID-19 has been predominantly that Beauty & Wellness industry professionals have been struggling with. In order, to sensitize the industry, B&WSSC developed Guidelines on Health, Safety & Hygiene for the industry and related stakeholders for usage, along with offering a Free Online Certification program on the precautionary measures, ensuring the industry preparedness, post the lockdown.
What is the way forward for you?
Alongside emerging need to transform India’s youth into a skilled workforce, low female participation in the Indian economy has been a major challenge. This has been attributed to the lack of access to quality education and underlying social, economic barriers limiting the opportunities for women.
Empowering women and girls and achieving gender equality requires concerted efforts of all stakeholders. A policy framework, encouraging and enabling women’s participation, should be constructed with an active awareness of the “gender-specific” constraints that face most women.
What is the way forward for B&WSSC?
Availability of trained professionals has always been challenging in this sector due to barrier of migration among the youth, primarily women also in some specific profiles, which leads to poaching of resources between major & middle level players. Enhancing the employability of the youth, providing trained workforce to fulfill staffing requirements of beauty & wellness employers is an area of prime focus. Thus, to suffice the need of competent faculty & trainers, training of trainers as an ongoing program is conducted which serves as a supply chain for producing enough faculty members for the current & future requirements of academies, training partners, colleges & universities in the domain & further more leading to capacity building.