Too Much Skin Showing? Time To Create A Dress Code

Dress codes are legal and having one could help you avoid problems

It's an uncomfortable summertime moment that many small business owners face: A female staffer shows up for work in the shortest of shorts. Or a male staffer arrives wearing a tank top. And they work in full view of customers or clients.

Dress code problems aren't confined to the summer months. But they do tend to be more frequent than in colder months when everyone is covering up. Employers who don't like a lot of skin showing need to create a dress code, and do it now.

Chances are, most of your staffers do have a sense of how they should dress for work. But having a dress code will help you avoid problems or to resolve them easily.

Dress codes are legal Your staffer in a skimpy outfit may protest when you say that's inappropriate dress for work. But you have the law on your side.

Employers are allowed to require employees to wear certain kinds of clothes, and to ban other types from the workplace. Consider that uniforms are required in some jobs. And that some clothes can be forbidden because of safety issues.

But the boss is also allowed to determine what kind of atmosphere the company is trying to project, and to require employees to conform with it.

The law does require you to create a dress code that is, to use a legalism, gender-neutral. That means that you're telling both sexes to dress appropriately. And the law does require that you don't discriminate against someone's religious beliefs -- for example, by banning turbans or dreadlocks that are worn for religious reasons.

What kind of atmosphere do you want?

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