Blog with Rob: Tattoos at work – socially acceptable or still a faux pas?

LIBN recently released an article regarding the fast rising visibility of tattoos in the workplace. They ran a poll on their site asking readers to vote, and I found the results interesting. 54% – the vast majority – still said they’d prefer not to see tattoos in the office, while 32% said that tattoos were acceptable within certain limitations, and 12% said that they were totally acceptable, no matter the shape, size, etc. Only 3% had a zero tolerance policy.

It made me think about my own workplace policy surrounding tattoos. While I do have a policy in place regarding tattoos, piercings and even hair color/style, that’s mostly for client-facing employees. For employees that mostly work in the office, our rules are much more relaxed.

When I did a poll of office employees, there was a surprising amount of responses in the “have tattoo, not visible” category and while there’s only a few in the “visible tattoo” category, that number has actually doubled in the last two years. While I’m ok with that, I don’t think I’m about to change my policy for field employees.

So, what do you think? How does your business handle tattoos?