Handling Dress Code Violations

April 13, 2006

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Once you have a dress code in place, you need to follow appropriate procedures to handle situations involving enforcement.

Have any complaints alleging an improperly dressed employee directed to you or to an appropriate supervisor.
You should then observe the employee. If you find that there is no issue, you should advise the individual who raised the issue that the employee's dress is not inappropriate.
If you feel that there is a problem with the way the employee is dressed, you should address the issue with the employee in private. Don't challenge the employee's taste or fashion sense. Rather, explain what is unacceptable about the employee's attire according to the policy standard and determine whether you want the employee to go home to change clothes. See if there are ways to allow the employee to come into compliance with the dress code without going home. Make it an informative discussion, not a critical one.

If the issue is a T-shirt that has an offensive or inappropriate slogan or picture, the employee could turn the shirt inside out and return to the worksite. Or perhaps the employee could wear a sweater or jacket over the T-shirt to cover the offensive slogan or picture.

If the majority of employees can go home, change clothes, and return within a short period of time, the policy should encourage this type of cost-conscious behavior. For the first situation requiring the employee to go home and change, you might want to consider paying normal wages and transportation costs, if any.
If the employee cannot go home and return within a reasonable amount of time, decide whether to send the employee home with or without pay for the remainder of the day or allow that employee to remain at work.
If an employee comes to work improperly dressed several times over a relatively short time frame, consider documenting the behavior and using your internal disciplinary system as you would with any other nonthreatening policy violation.

Sexual harassment. It is possible that the way in which you communicate your dress code, or violations of it, may constitute hostile environment sexual harassment.

The circulation of a memo among management staff that detailed inappropriate employee attire and named the employees who had worn such clothing, along with the resulting offensive jokes about the memo contents, created an abusive working environment.