Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR.
I recently created a survey to gauge your thoughts about the group and Discuss HR, so firstly thank you very much to all of you who have completed it. For those of you that have not yet filled in the survey you can via this link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/V5T9XWB
One of the points that has come out of this survey is that some of the newer members are not aware of what Discuss HR is. Simply put it is a weekly article written by fellow group members to provide an insightful and slightly different view on the world of HR with the purpose of discussing HR! It is also apparent that many of you are regular readers and we will be looking at your suggestions for articles. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy Annabel Kaye’s view on the issue of work place dress codes. (Ed Scrivener)
Too hot to handle?
I think I am a grown up, and able to decide for myself what to wear to work (and what not to wear). I don’t really like to be told. Recent walks by women all over the world under the banner of Slut Walks got me thinking about how we seek to control what women (and men) wear.
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| Nadia Eweida |
A burkah ban is seen by some as frankly ‘Unbritish’ unless there is a real need for a woman’s face to be seen. But a crucifix ban can be lawful if this is related to Health and Safety, and the Court of Appeal decided that British Airways were entitled to require a customer-facing worker to conceal a crucifix as part of a general ban on religious displays.
German bosses have persuaded the EU that they have the right to require women to wear bras to work. We have yet to see men demanding equal treatment in that regard. A bring your under wiring to work day is not the most likely equal opportunity event in a workplace near you.
To what extent is it an employer’s business what employees wear to work?
Are dress codes a legitimate imposition of image and standards, or is this a load of white middle-aged people trying to impose their standards of dress on everyone else? Do your customers really mind what your staff wear? If they do, do customers’ ideas of appropriate clothing match yours?
Our professional practise had a credit controller decades ago who looked like a zombie/goth: black hair, black nails, black lips, she certainly didn’t match the corporate image. She had a mostly desk-based job, and we decided to put our conservative instincts aside and give her the job as she plainly was the best candidate for the role.
Part of her job was credit control, and from time to time she went to client’s offices to sit in reception and wait for a cheque. She always got one quickly – people couldn’t get her out of their plush front office fast enough.
She looked different. She was different. But she was completely effective in her role.
The customer is not always right
Years ago, managers told me “customers don’t like black people” or “customers don’t like obviously gay people”. The law steamed right past that, and no-one would seriously rely on such reasoning today. Some Muslim women get stick from stricter Muslim customers if they don’t cover up enough. Should we be requiring them to wear the niqab because that is what some customers want (if they do), or should we be supporting their right to wear what they want? The customer is not always right.
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| The HR Director's new look... |
Is it right to assume that customers are automatically put off by people who look different to them? When I first started work it was ‘business suits’ only, and women were not allowed to wear trousers to work. When I was at school the uniform rules extended to underwear, and we had inspections! We have come a long way.
Does it offend me if the coffee shop person has dreadlocks and piercings? Not nearly as much as surly service. I don’t care what they wear, but I do care how I am treated. Whilst it may be that there is a segment of the population that finds it hard to deal with people who are not in business suits, quite often it is the senior directors who object to how someone dresses, not the customers, and there is no customer profiling or research to support their point of view.
The real issue for many customers is not what people wear, but whether they can understand what your staff are saying! Whether native English speakers or not, it is far more important to be able to have a conversation with your staff than admire their outfit.
Years ago I had a client who took great pride in how informal people were in their organisation and how everybody could wear what they wanted. Even torn jeans were acceptable. Every time I turned up at their offices (about once a month) I was told, no need to wear suits for us. Eventually I got the hint, and went out and bought a pair of torn jeans – just for them. Next time I visited they said “It is wonderful you feel relaxed enough with us to wear what you want”!
Who’s in charge here?
A lot of my older clients say - But it’s my company, what do you mean I can’t control who wears what. The boss’s right to lay down standards of dress is constrained by equality law, and s/he who pays the piper cannot call any tune they feel like.
If an outfit (or accessory) is genuinely dangerous (or a hygiene problem in the food or medical sector), then it may be legitimate to ask staff not to wear it. However, there might be other ways round the difficulty – wearing medical tape over a stud, for example. Surely banning should be the last option once alternatives have been explored, not the first?
Providing a staff uniform can be useful. I have worked with IT companies who give their technicians sweat shirts so they can easily be identified on client’s sites (and asked for help). They often specify that everyone wear trousers since women crawling around under desks in micro minis tend to attract the wrong kind of attention. So far I have not heard of a woman IT worker (or man) objecting to that rule.
Security workers, medical workers, police and the armed forces all wear uniforms in environments where it is really important to be able quickly and easily to identify who is who and what their job function is. In a world of email and telephone call centres, these physical signals are invisible and arguably irrelevant.
But although you may well have a ‘legitimate aim’ in setting standards, you also have to be able to justify how you apply it. The Catholic school that banned boys from wearing their hair in ‘cornrows’ persuaded the High Court that their policy of requiring conventional standards of appearance was legitimate, but their inflexible application of their policy produced a detriment for particular racial groups and could not be justified given the possible alternative approaches that could have been taken.
Sexual harassment/religious issues
What about a workplace without rules? If everyone wears what they want, then other problems can arise. I was talking to a University Lecturer recently who remarked that his female students were attending his workshops during hot weather in micro shorts and a top smaller than a bra. “I often work closely with my students at the computer desk, moving the mouse to show them where to click. When they come to class half naked, I worry that I will be accused of sexual harassment if I get to close to them or look down at the wrong moment. I feel sexually harassed by what these young women wear.”
Should we have a rule “If you don’t want it looked at or talked about, put it away”? The Slut Walkers are right to the extent that women should be free to wear what they want without fear of assault, but is it reasonable to go to work half clothed and expect no-one to notice or say anything? Would it be OK for a man to go to the office in shorts and sandals and nothing else?
The modern workplace includes everything from Sikhs who need turbans and bangles and knives, to women who wear hardly anything, or women in the niqab or burqa. We have teenage Goths, eco warriors and men and women in suits.
Are we going to try to stem the tide of diversity and require everyone to look the same? Is my dress code going to be driven by religious sensibilities of religions I am not a member of? Are we going to go for a common look but allow wide variation? Or are we going to let everyone do their thing?
I have always wanted to dye my hair pink. Given my line of work and the fact I do spend a lot of time with clients (and in tribunal) I felt it was not appropriate and I have not yet done it. Nobody told me not to, nobody required me not to. It was my decision. When I get to the age of 70 (which by my calculation is my most likely retirement age given how things are going) I will celebrate by dyeing my hair pink ... or do you think I should do it now?
Meanwhile, have a look at your own dress code/policy at work. Is all that stuff really necessary? If I put you on the witness stand today, could you make a real case for how your business really needs all this? If I did put you on the witness stand with my hair dyed pink, would it make me more or less of a dangerous adversary or effective friend?
About the author
Annabel Kaye has been specialising in employment law since the seventies. She founded Irenicon in 1980 and has spent the last thirty years helping HR, line managers and everyone else look at employment law in a way that gets some organisational gain. She likes to think about things from a different angle and making the complex simple – despite the government’s best efforts. She has traded through three recessions and advised clients from multi-national corporations to the smallest organisation. The toughest thing has always been to balance the competing needs of staff and organisation and that never goes away whatever the legal details.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 14th July and will be written by experienced HR professional Sheena McLullich.
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