Businesses are increasingly discovering the advantages of using mediation in the workplace to resolve all kinds of issues that arise between employees. Often when these situations arise it is better to nip them in the bud before things get so bad that one or other of the employees resigns or leaves.

It was recently reported that women are complaining about being forced to wear high heels to work or receiving unwelcome comments about their appearance. Men generally do not have this problem because they are not judged so much by their appearance and the main choice is whether to wear a tie and what colour.

Employers regularly tell women to put on more makeup, wear high heels and short skirts, research has found.

Large numbers of women feel their employer has unfairly criticised their appearance in the workplace, with nearly 20% saying they felt that managers paid more attention to their appearance than to that of their male peers.

Nearly 10% of women have been told by managers that they would prefer them to wear high heels in the office or when with clients, because it made them ‘more appealing’. Many women revealed they had been told to dress more provocatively and to be ‘sexier’ – with 86% of those pressured to dress ‘sexier’ and feeling their career might suffer if they didn’t comply. It has to be said that sometimes it is the other way round in law firms, where it is felt that junior women should dress less provocatively.

Scrutiny of their appearance at work frequently left some women feeling ‘humiliated’, according to the survey, with nearly one in ten told to wear more make up so they ‘looked prettier’ and a similar percentage given a dressing down about their appearance in front of colleagues.

The survey of 2,000 employees also found that men were aware of the disparity, with almost half saying they felt that their dress code was more clearly defined and colleagues were far less likely to comment about their appearance than that of their female colleagues.

The study was commissioned by a national law firm, after a rise in the number of clients mentioning comments made by their employers about their appearance.

The law regarding dress codes is relatively clear. An employer is allowed to impose a dress code on its employees but usually this will be put in place for health and safety reasons, or to promote a particular image, for example, of smartness and efficiency.

A dress code must not be discriminatory on protected grounds such as gender or religious belief, and disabled employees have the right to have adjustments made to alleviate disadvantage.

It was some years ago that the legal profession relaxed the rules concerning Court dress and women could wear trouser suits and earrings in Court. When I first began in practice a judge might refuse to hear a woman at all if she was not dressed in a traditional manner.

Appropriate dress at work has been controversial for a long time, with disputes regarding religious symbols and headscarves, for example, being highlighted in the press. A lawyer was recently criticised by the judge for wearing badges and insignia in Court and looking ‘like something out of Harry Potter’. In France, there has been uproar over the ban on wearing the ‘Burkini’. Dress down codes can be a fraught area in the workplace, with arguments over what is acceptable ‘smart/casual wear’. At the start of term, a school recently hit the headlines when it started to enforce its uniform code.

When such issues arise in a workplace environment it can lead to allegations of discrimination, intimidation, even stress, and bullying. Low morale, under performance, absenteeism, and even resignations, can follow. Such disputes between an employer and employee frequently manifest themselves into a formal grievance against the employer. A grievance can lead to an employment tribunal claim, which, apart from time and expense, carries the risk of damaging the business’ reputation, whether justified or not. A sensible and cost-effective way to deal with such issues and defuse them promptly is to call on the services of an independent workplace mediator.

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