Exactly What to Say When Setting Up Your First Dress Code Policy

The idea behind an office dress code is simple: It’s a written standard for what employees should wear on the job and how you'll handle violations. 

But the mechanics of creating a dress code policy can feel complicated. You want to set the right tone for your workplace while leaving employees some room for personal style. And your policy needs to stay in line with state and federal law—both in what the policy says and in how you enforce it.

It might seem easier to just skip creating a dress code policy. But you’ll be glad you did the first time you have a situation to confront.

Here's how to create a dress code policy that fits your business: why you want one in writing, the most common types, the legal pitfalls to watch for, and a sample policy you can adapt.

Do I need a business dress code policy?

There’s no law requiring dress code policies. But here’s a secret—whether your dress code is written down or not, you have one anyway, based on common practice. Many of us, at one time or another, have flipped through our mental files of what we’ve seen other people wearing when deciding whether something in our closet is ok for work.

Getting your dress code down on paper helps in a few ways:

• Employees don’t have to guess about your expectations, which takes a small daily stress off their plate. 

• When an issue comes up, you have a standard to point to instead of an awkward conversation about personal taste.

• It gives you some control over the professional image that your business projects and the company culture you're building.

Dress codes matter more in some businesses than others. If your team wears uniforms, handles food, works around machinery, or shows up at customers' homes, industry standards may already dictate part of your answer. Safety rules, health codes, and customers recognizing your crew at the door all depend on getting it right.

So get your dress code documented, and shape it around the needs of your business.

The 4 most common types of workplace dress codes

First, let’s understand common types of dress codes at small businesses:

1. Formal business attire

Suits required, period. Business formal means matched suits, dress shirts, dress pants or skirts, and closed-toe dress shoes.

• Pros: Almost no room for interpretation, so it's the easiest standard to enforce consistently.

• Cons:  It’s becoming archaic in all but the most traditional and client-facing workplaces, like law and accounting firms.

2. Business casual dress code

The default at most workplaces, though it means slightly different things at each one. Business casual typically allows collared shirts and blouses, slacks and khakis, dresses and skirts, and sweaters or blazers, while ruling out T-shirts, jeans, shorts, sandals, and flip-flops.

Some businesses relax this in warmer months into what's often called summer casual (allowing shorts, sleeveless tops, or open-toed shoes). If you do this, put the dates and the specific changes in writing. 

• Pros: Widely understood, so employees arrive already knowing roughly what you mean.

• Cons: Lots of wiggle room. Most everyday wardrobes fall somewhere on the business casual spectrum, so you'll need examples to make it concrete.

3. Casual dress code

One step down from business casual, and common at small creative businesses, tech startups, and agencies. Jeans, polos, and T-shirts are generally fine.

• Pros: Easy to comply with, and it doesn't ask employees to buy a separate work wardrobe.

• Cons: Hard to pin down where it becomes too casual. Without a few specific exclusions, you'll end up making judgment calls in the moment.

4. Uniforms or required attire

This dress code is used when customers need to identify your staff on sight or the work itself dictates what's safe to wear (like restaurant or home services work). This could mean a branded shirt, scrubs, all-black attire, or safety gear like steel-toed boots and eye protection.

• Pros: The clearest standard of the four, and it handles safety and customer recognition at the same time.

• Cons: Someone has to pay for the gear, and federal wage rules limit how much of that cost you can pass on to employees. 

Legal considerations to keep in mind when setting up a dress code policy

Dress code troubles can come up when a rule collides with a protected characteristic, like religion or disability, or with activity the law protects, like union organizing. Review the legal considerations below before writing your policy.

If you have questions, Gusto customers can contact a certified HR professional for personal support.

Safety

Safety always trumps dress code flexibility. For example, if your employees work around factory machinery, that can mean close-fitting clothing, no loose jewelry, and hair tied back. The Occupational Safety and Health Act often dictates specifics like head or eye protection.

If OSHA requires protective equipment, you generally have to provide it at no cost to employees. 

Union insignia

Employees have the right to wear pro-union buttons, shirts, and pins, even if you’re not a union workplace. If you restrict it, the burden is on you to justify it and not on the employee to prove you were wrong. Talk to an employment attorney before writing a union restriction into your policy.

Political insignia

You generally have latitude to keep purely political messaging out of the workplace, like a shirt supporting a candidate. But a message tied to working conditions (like pay, treatment on the job, discrimination) can become protected activity. 

As with any dress code policy, it’s important to enforce this one evenhandedly, regardless of who you intend to vote for.

Fragrance

Plenty of businesses now limit perfume, cologne, and strongly scented products because of allergies and sensitivities. That's generally fine to require. Keep in mind that an employee with asthma or migraines may request a fragrance-free workspace as a disability accommodation.

Facial hair

You can require employees to be well-groomed, but blanket no-beard rules are risky. Beards carry religious significance for many employees. And a skin condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae, which occurs primarily in Black men, means shaving isn't an option at all for some people. 

The EEOC treats an inflexible no-beard policy as something the employer has to justify as a business necessity. If your policy requires clean shaving, build in an exception process.

Hair texture and hairstyles

More than half of states and some cities have some form of hair discrimination law, often called a CROWN Act. These laws typically prohibit grooming standards that penalize natural hair textures and protective styles like locs, braids, twists, and bantu knots. 

A rule requiring hair to look "neat" or "professional" is exactly where these laws come into play, because that wording invites subjective enforcement. Avoid vague appearance language about hair and check your state and city laws.

Piercings and tattoos

Employers generally have broad latitude to limit or prohibit visible tattoos and piercings, as long as they’re not related to a religious belief or expression, or when a medical condition is involved.

Gender specificity

Sex-specific dress codes—skirt and pantyhose requirements for women, different hair-length rules by gender—used to be standard. They're now a legal risk. In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), the Supreme Court held that Title VII's ban on sex discrimination covers sexual orientation and gender identity, which makes enforcing gender-based appearance rules hard to defend.

Most small businesses are better off with one standard written in gender-neutral terms. If you want to include gender-specific requirements, talk to an employment attorney first.

Religion

You can't discriminate against employees over a sincerely held religious belief, in your dress code or anywhere else. That often means accommodating dress, head coverings, hair length, or grooming practices. 

In 2005, Red Robin paid $150,000 to settle claims of religious bias over an employee's tattoos. And the bar for refusing now is even higher than it used to be. In Groff v. DeJoy (2023), the Supreme Court held that you have to show "substantial increased costs" to your business by allowing the accommodation. 

The EEOC's guidance on Religious Garb and Grooming in the Workplace is worth reading if this is likely to come up.

Disabilities

An employee who doesn't meet your dress or grooming standard may have a disability protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act or a state equivalent. A required uniform might irritate a recent surgery site, or required footwear might not work with a prosthetic or mobility device. Treat these as accommodation conversations, not violations. The Job Accommodation Network has specifics on dress code accommodations.

One threshold note: federal antidiscrimination law applies to employers with 15 or more employees. State laws often kick in well below that, sometimes at one employee, so check your state before assuming a rule doesn't apply to you.

How to communicate and enforce your dress code policy

A dress code only works if employees know about it and know you'll apply it. Once you’re ready, you should:

• Put the dress code policy in your employee handbook and get a signature. Employee acknowledgement via signature is what you'll rely on if you ever discipline someone over a violation. Keep the signed acknowledgment in the employee's personnel file.

• Give notice before you enforce a new rule. If you're writing a dress code for the first time or changing an existing one, tell employees first and give them a reasonable window to adjust.

• Handle violations promptly and document them. Depending on what happened, you may need to issue a verbal warning or send someone home to change. Repeated problems may require progressively stricter discipline. 

Be consistent with enforcement 

No dress code can list every possible item of clothing, so managers will end up making judgment calls. That's fine and expected. But similar situations should be handled similarly, or else you risk: 

• Legal exposure. If you've let something slide for months and then suddenly write an employee up for it, the write-up can look like a pretext. Regardless of what you intended, you’ll have a problem if corrections happen to mirror race, sex, religion, or age.

• Lost credibility. Overlooking a clear violation because someone is your top salesperson, a super nice person, or just “pulls off the look” gives everyone a reason to push back on dress code violations.

How to pay an employee who is sent home for a dress code violation

Sending employees home is where dress code enforcement can become a wage and hour problem. Follow these best practices to avoid those problems:

• For hourly employees, you should pay for the hours they actually worked. Some states also require reporting-time pay when you cut a shift short, so check state rules.

• For salaried exempt employees, you can send them home to change like anyone else. You just can't dock their pay for the time they were out. Exempt employees have to receive their full salary for any week in which they do any work, and partial-day deductions break that. A pattern of improper deductions can cost you their exempt status altogether.

Keeping a few extra shirts or uniforms on hand solves these problems more cheaply than sending anyone home, which is worth it if your employees live far away or you can't spare them.

Sample business casual dress code policy

This dress code policy template gives you specific examples to guide employees, states plainly that the list isn't exhaustive, and leaves managers room to use judgment. Adapt it to your business as needed.

Have an employment attorney review your policy before you adopt it, especially if you're adding grooming standards or anything gender-specific.

Keep your dress code up-to-date

Dress codes don’t have to be messy. Decide what fits your business, write it down, hand it to your team, and hold everyone to the same standard.

Then keep it current. More than half of states now have hair discrimination laws, and that list is still growing. What worked for a five-person shop may not fit once you're running two locations. Review the policy when your business or state and city laws change.

Finally, give your dress code a home in your employee handbook. Gusto's Employee Handbook Creator builds a handbook for the states you operate in, and flags policies that need to be updated when the law changes.

FAQs

Can you send an employee home to change for a dress code violation?

Yes, for both hourly and salaried employees, but pay rules still apply. Pay hourly employees for the hours they actually worked, and check whether your state requires reporting-time pay when a shift gets cut short. Salaried exempt employees can be sent home too, but you can't dock their pay for the time they were out. Partial-day deductions violate the salary basis rule, and a pattern of them can cost you the exemption.

Can an employer require employees to pay for their own uniforms?

Yes, with limits. If you require a uniform, federal law treats the cost as your business expense. You can pass it to employees, but the cost can't drop a non-exempt employee's pay below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or cut into overtime pay in any workweek. You can spread the cost across paychecks as long as no single week falls short. Several states restrict uniform deductions further.

Can a dress code have different rules for men and women?

It can, but sex-specific requirements carry legal risk. Rules like mandatory skirts, pantyhose, or different hair-length standards by gender have drawn discrimination claims. And because Title VII's ban on sex discrimination covers gender identity, enforcing a gender-based rule against a transgender or non-binary employee could turn a dress code issue into a federal claim. Most small businesses are better served by one standard written in gender-neutral terms.

Does a dress code apply to remote employees?

Only if your policy says so. Many businesses apply a narrower standard remotely, covering video calls with customers or external partners rather than the entire workday. Whichever approach you take, write it into the same policy and enforce it the same way for everyone. Unwritten expectations are nearly impossible to apply evenhandedly.