Take Your Dress Code Seriously

What’s the difference between dreadlocks and matted hair? You might be forgiven for wondering whether I’ve had a career change into hairdressing, but in fact this was a question the Employment Appeal Tribunal had to decide two weeks ago.

The Claimant, Mr Harris, was a Rastafarian and wore his hair in dreadlocks. He was employed by an agency and worked as an executive driver for a company.

The company took on a number of the other agency drivers as full time employees but did not take Mr Harris on. The company said that this was because Mr Harris was sometimes abrasive, flouted dress rules and was sometimes unavailable for work.

Mr Harris told the agency that he thought the real reason the company had not taken him on was because of his dreadlocks. Mr Harris brought a claim for discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, on the basis of his Rastafarianism.

It was accepted by the Tribunal and the EAT that Rastafarianism amounts to a religious or similar belief and therefore is protected by the legislation. The point to be decided was whether the company’s dress code, which stated that drivers should have a “smart professional haircut and should ensure hair is tidy”, was a policy with which Rastafarians would have more difficulty complying.

You may remember previous high profile stories in the media about Muslim employees being unable to comply with dress codes because their religious beliefs meant that they had to wear a veil or keep their beard a certain length. You may also remember that the employees lost their cases.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr Harris also lost. The Tribunal took the view, which was upheld on appeal, that the company’s dress code was justifiable and that the company didn’t care how Mr Harris wore his hair, provided that it was tidy.

The key lesson for employers from all these cases is that you must always consider whether your policy might disadvantage an employee and you must be able to justify any policy you have in place.

If the company in this case had specified that its drivers were not allowed to have dreadlocks, simply because they didn’t like that hairstyle, they almost certainly would have lost.

Published 17/10/2007. The author of this article is James Collings