TATTOOS IN THE WORKPLACE — BOSSES DON’T MIND
Go ahead, get that ink. Your boss shouldn’t mind.
Nora Flanagan’s first tattoos hid strategically under her clothing. An aspiring teacher, Flanagan worried the ink could cost her a job. “There was definitely an idea of what a teacher should look like,” Flanagan, now 42, recalls of her early career in the late 1990s. Teachers wore long, wholesome floral skirts, not childcorrupting body art.
But several years into her job at Chicago’s Lane Tech College Prep High School, Flanagan got a teaching award, tenure and greater confidence. She shed the floral skirts, slipped on her Doc Martens and accumulated more tattoos, letting them creep visibly down her arms.
Now chair of the English department at Northside College Prep High School, Flanagan is covered in tattoos from her knuckles to her collarbone, plus some on her calves, and she wears them proudly.
“I’m the tattooed teacher,” said Flanagan, adding that she has gotten no complaints from parents or administration.
“It’s a big deal to the kids for a day and then I start to give them grades like everyone else, and no one cares.”
A study on tattoos at work has come to a similar conclusion: No one seems to mind.
The research, published over the summer in the journal Human Relations, surveyed more than 2,000 people and found that the inked were just as likely to be employed and to earn as much as the uninked, regardless of the number, visibility or offensiveness of their tattoos.
That was a surprise to the study authors, as previous research has found that hiring managers widely perceive people with tattoos to be less employable than those without, even in recent years when the popularity of tattoos has surged. That negative perception is driven in part by other research that has found customers frown upon being served by or buying from people with tattoos, which years ago were associated with countercultural delinquents.
“We thought with this new information we are certainly going to uncover some discrimination,” said lead author Michael French, professor of health economics at University of Miami Business School.
Perceptions don’t play out
But the study found no adverse employment outcomes for the tattooed, regardless of whether they were men or women, bluecollar or whitecollar workers, in management or not. In fact, having one or more tattoos was associated with slightly higher employment and more hours worked, the study found.
The results suggest negative perceptions of tattoos don’t play out in actual hiring decisions, or that workplaces are embracing tattoos’ evolution from symbols of rebellion to expressions of creativity and commemorations of life events, French said.
“This is a healthy and common form of expression,” said French, 57, who has a colorful arrow on his forearm and numerous other tattoos, all of which he got over the past decade. Workplaces that ban tattoos are at a competitive disadvantage, he added, because they miss out on good people.
Tattoos have become much more prevalent and visible in recent years, moving far beyond the subtle butterfly on the ankle to full sleeves and neck tattoos.
Thirty percent of Americans had at least one tattoo in 2015, up from 20 percent four years earlier, according to Harris polls. Seventy percent of people with tattoos had more than one.
Nearly half of millennials are tattooed, compared with 13 percent of baby boomers, the poll found. A third of 40somethings had tattoos in 2015, up from 14 percent in 2003, changing what it looks like to be middle aged.
The ubiquity is such that, in a rare moment of unity, Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be inked.
Tattoos still carry some stigma. Nearly 30 percent of adults without tattoos think those with are less intelligent.
Still, most people surveyed shrugged their shoulders at tattooed professionals.
More than 60 percent said they were comfortable with their banker or doctor having tattoos. More than 70 percent of parents said they were comfortable with tattoos on camp counselors and teachers. Attitudes were starkly divided along generational lines. Half of millennials feel “extremely comfortable” with a tattooed judge, compared with 15 percent of people over 70.
Whether the embrace of tattoos will change as tastes shift or taut millennial skin ages remains to be seen; 23 percent of the tattooed survey respondents said they regretted their ink.
But they may be feeling less pressure to get them surgically erased. Tattoo removal procedures were down by 35 percent in 2017 compared to five years earlier, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
“Extension of yourself ”
At Chicagobased Atticus Recruiting, which places attorneys in law firms, coowner Rob Mcandrew said it is better to err on the conservative side, at least when making a first impression. He advises new lawyers to interview wearing suits, which cover most tattoos.
“Know your audience,” said Michael Erwin, senior career adviser for Chicagobased Careerbuilder.com. While many more job candidates interview with tattoos showing and the casualization of workplaces has made employers much more accepting, some more conservative industries, such as banking and finance, stick to straightlaced convention, he said.
Ultimately, though, people should work in an environment that allows them to be who they are.
“Tattoos are an extension of yourself so you want to make sure you are at a place that embraces that,” Erwin said.
Many employers are loosening their collars as younger, tattooed generations take leadership roles at companies and more conservative executives age out, said Mark Marsen, director of human resources at a Pittsburgh health nonprofit and a subject expert with the Society for Human Resources Management.
Though tattoos are not covered by antidiscrimination laws, employers run the risk that an antitattoo stance could be construed as singling out a demographic that is protected, such as for race, age or sexual orientation, he said.
“I think it’s good practice to always focus on job requirements,” Marsen said. “If someone is able to do the job, it shouldn’t make a hill of beans difference what they look like, including whether they have tattoos.”
In a case a few years back, an employer faced a disability dis crimination charge after asking an employee to cover his arm tattoos as the man had a health condition that caused him to overheat, said Jason Clagg, an attorney at Barne and Thornburg who represented the employer in the case. Manage ment argued, in part, that soldier wear thin longsleeve shirts to protect them from heat, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed the case he said.
Clagg said he is writing fewe tattoospecific workplace policie amid “a gradual lessening of re strictions and less concerns.” Bu some employers still take a harde line — including highend restau rants and those that work with children or medicine — out o concern that they might bothe customers.
Tattoo policies must be applied consistently and include excep tions that allow for reasonable ac commodations for religious be liefs. Employers also should be aware the content of a tattoo could be problematic if it i deemed to violate the civil right of other employees, such as an im age of the Confederate flag.
“Anything that could be poten tially racially or sexually charged there should be a consistent poli cy that anything like that would be covered,” Marsen said.