Dress code. It sounds so simple!
Unfortunately, it’s not…
Dress codes are tricky and you can easily find yourself falling into the murky waters of discrimination.
It’s not surprising when you think about it. What we wear is connected to our religion, our gender and the generation we are born to.
However, it is well within an employer’s legal rights to have a dress code, which means that it must be possible to achieve a golden policy that ticks all the right boxes and has a perfect balance.
The first step in thinking about a dress code is establishing whether it is really necessary for your business. What will it achieve? How will it benefit the business?
You might think, “I just want my people to look smart”, which is fine but consider the implications.
Once you start telling your employees what they can and can’t wear at work, you are creating tensions between the rights of the individual to express themselves and your rights as an employer to set standards.
That isn’t a fluffy bunny HR opinion, that’s down to the Human Rights Act 1988 and the Equality Act 2010. The former is all about freedoms of expression and the latter around employer’s policies not discriminating based on age, religion, gender and more.
Nicola Thorp was sent home without pay for showing up to perform her nine-hour shift (which required a lot of walking clients to and from meeting rooms) wearing flat shoes and refusing to go out and buy high heels.
After gathering 150,000 signatures for a petition against the dress code policy, she sparked a full-on revolution that not only went viral online but also quickly prompted an inquiry overseen by two parliamentary committees.
Read some of our dress code tips.
Three main points to keep in mind:
- Be accommodating
- Make sure the dress code can be applied fairly to all your employees
- Make sure the dress code is reasonable and ensures workplace safety