What You Need To Know About Employee Dress Codes
A private employer has rights when it comes to imposing a dress code in his or her place of work. The dress codes can only be imposed based on law. The labor law allows the employer to impose the dress codes as a way of enhancing the safety of employers in his work place.
Some of the regulations which the employers can come up with include grooming and jewelry. For the case of hair, the employer can ask employees to tie their hair a certain way to keep them safe or to maintain high levels of quality service in the workplace.
As an employer, you should always apply restrictive measures in your dress code regulation.
Have A Clear Policy
You should come up with a clear policy in writing and circulate it so that all employees in your workplace can know about the regulations. The policy should be based on the company’s culture and image. The business reasons for the dress code should be clearly indicated.
Base your dress code regulations on health and safety reasons. If you have staff who work in a food production plant, you can ask them to tie and cover their hair. If they work in a production company with fast running machines, you can ask them to tie their hair backward to avoid accidents.
Different people have various considerations of casual attire. Always state what your organization considers appropriate and the dress codes which you consider casual.
The policy should apply to all employees uniformly. It is necessary to apply the policy in a transparent manner so that you can avoid cases where the employees will consider it discriminative.
Give special consideration to people with disabilities. There are employees in your workplace that cannot adhere to the dress codes due to their health conditions; you
should put them into consideration in your policy.
What You Should Avoid In Your Employee Dress Codes And Clothing Policy
Avoid harassment
The policy should not show any form of harassment which can lead to court cases.
Gender discrimination should not be encouraged in your policy. If employees will require uniforms, the cost of the uniforms should be met by the employer.
Religious practices and body piercing which are inconsistent with the companies branding can be prohibited in the organization. The managers can as well go further to prohibit slogans and logos which can be provocative to other employees such as
confederate flags.
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