A Dress Code for Every Season

David Noland, J.D.—President, HRCentral Corporation

“Research suggests that the decision to hire or to deselect a candidate is made within the first 90 seconds of the interview,” says Human Resources Consultant Steve Cohen, author of Mess Management: Lessons from a Corporate Hit Man. This means that, consciously or unconsciously, you are going to hire the applicant who presents him or herself with a genuine smile, a firm handshake and a well-groomed, put-together appearance.

In the same way, how your employees present themselves at work impacts the impression current and potential customers form of your business. Even if your employees don’t interact with clients, how they dress can impact their productivity.

Setting Appropriate Guidelines

Unless it’s appropriate to your brand (think UPS) or to employee safety, your employees won’t be wearing uniforms to work. They will dress like the individuals they are and, since common sense isn’t as common as we’d like to think, your employees need some rules to follow so they don’t make bad clothing choices.

So, what rules should you set?

First, start with some basics. All employees should understand that basic hygiene is a requirement. Strong body odors, whether caused by smoking, too much perfume or strong lotions, not bathing or forgetting to brush teeth, can make for an unpleasant work environment or can put off customers. Advise employees to follow good hygiene practices and to consider others when putting on lotion or perfume. If your employees smoke, make sure they do so outside (in many states, this is a requirement) and provide mouthwash and a fabric spray to help eliminate the odors after they are done.

Another basic is the condition of the employees’ clothing. All clothing should be clean and free of stains; it should not be wrinkled, ripped or worn-out. Clothing should fit appropriately; it should not be too-tight, provocative or revealing.

Second, determine what type of appearance is appropriate to your organization. This varies based on client expectations for your type of business, the culture of your organization, your geographic location (including climate) and safety requirements. A financial institution or law firm will have more professional standards of dress than a technology or graphic design firm. A financial institution on the East Coast may have a more formal dress code than one on the West Coast.

Look around at other, similar businesses in your area. How do their employees dress? What impression does it make on you?

Third, consider other factors that affect appearance. These include hairstyles, jewelry choices, visible piercings and tattoos. It’s not enough to say that hair should be clean and neatly trimmed and styled. Would it be appropriate for an employee to show up at work with bright blue or hot pink hair, even if it was in a slicked back pony tail? Dangly earrings, necklaces or bracelets may catch on equipment and pose a safety risk. Multiple piercings in ears or piercings in noses or eyebrows may deter more conservative clients from doing business with you, and the same goes for visible tattoos.

Finally, consider legal ramifications of your employees’ wardrobe choices. If you allow your employee’s to wear T-shirts to work (either regularly or only on designated casual days), be careful to specify what types of logos, slogans or images are appropriate. Any clothing that includes any image or saying that is racist, denigrating to others, sexually suggestive or contains crude or obscene language or pictures is inappropriate in any work environment.

Communicating and Enforcing Guidelines

Once you have established your organizations rules for employee appearance, you must communicate them. The best way to do this is with a written dress code policy.

Writing a dress code policy can be tricky. Many employers run into trouble when they try to establish different guidelines for each gender. While in some cases, it may be appropriate to specify that men are required to wear ties as part of a professional appearance and that women may wear a professional-looking, open-toed pump, in general it is best not to have gender-specific dress codes.

Your written policy should include examples of both appropriate and inappropriate clothing choices.

In the same way that you enforce standards for employee performance and conduct, you must enforce your dress code if you want employees to follow it. In general, the best person to enforce the dress code is the employee’s direct supervisor. If an employee reports to work inappropriately dressed, the supervisor should have the authority to send him home to change. In most cases, you do not have to pay employees for the time it takes them to go home, change clothes and return to work.

Reasonable Accommodations

If you have an employee who is unable to follow the dress code due to a medical condition or disability, or for strongly held religious beliefs, it may be appropriate accommodate the employee by allowing an exception to the dress code. All accommodations should be discussed with the employee in order to find a reasonable compromise while still upholding the standards of appearance you have set for your organization.

HRCentral Can Help

For over 20 years, HRCentral has been helping organizations establish and document dress code policies. We will review your policy for compliance with federal and state anti-discrimination laws and make sure the wording of your policy is clear and easy for employees to understand.