With one out of every five adults in the U.S. sporting at least one tattoo, employers are seeing more workers and applicants with Tweety Birds and barbed wire body art. While the tattooed workers view their ink as a form of self-expression, many employers see tattoos as potentially offensive to customers and to other workers.
Tattoos: Freedom of Expression versus Corporate Image
The stigma of tattoos still exists even though more people have them. Those with tattoos are usually seen as being risk takers and having deviant or rebellious behavior.
Do employers agree that a person’s appearance is nowhere near as important as his/her professional skills? With 42 percent of hiring managers admitting that that they have lower opinions of job applicants with visible tattoos and 76 percent stating that visible tattoos are unprofessional, corporate America may not be ready for visible tattoos just yet.
Tattoos in the Workplace and The Law
According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), employers are allowed to administer dress codes and appearance policies as long as they do not discriminate against a person’s race, color, religion, age, national origin, or gender.
It is important when creating a dress code to take into consideration the company's mission, goals, and desired outcomes, and identify what's in the best interest of the corporation. The dress code should delineate clear ties between jobs in which visible tattoos may or may not be suitable and be applied consistently across the board. For example, a company policy cannot allow an employee to have a rose tattoo visible while asking another to cover up a tattoo of a skull.
Dress code policies can differ across industries, but ultimately the duties of the job (customer-facing roles vs. non-customer-facing roles, for example) should dictate just how important tattoos are in the hiring process. For a peek into how Starbucks’ employees with tattoos are challenging company dress codes, click here.
Employers also need to weigh the internal culture they want to foster. For companies wanting to recruit talented creative types, perhaps allowing a flash of a Betty Paige bicep tattoo would open up the candidate pool and make employees feel that they work at a pretty hip place.
