Nose rings and other facial piercing can be a turnoff for some customers. Ditto for extreme hairstyles or strangely colored hair. Especially if your employees meet the public, you might consider a dress and grooming code.

But you may be hesitant to take that step. It’s reasonable to wonder about potential legal problems. Fortunately, you have a largely free hand in controlling your employees’ appearance while they’re at work. The key is to have a legitimate business reason for your rules.

For example, Widget Manufacturing Co. has a rule requiring all of its assembly workers to wear pants – no skirts or dresses allowed. The reason: to avoid having fabric get caught in the company’s machinery. This is a proper reason and unlikely to lead to a legal challenge.

Still, there are some limits to what you can require. You can’t have a dress code that discriminates against employees because of their race, color, religion, national origin or gender. And you need some flexibility for employees who have a disability. Let’s start with a look at how the anti-discrimination rules apply. Then we’ll get to some specific tips for creating and enforcing your dress and grooming code.

NO DISCRIMINATION

In some cases, you can run afoul of federal civil rights laws. Those laws ban discrimination in the workplace. They basically apply to employers who have 15 or more employees. Several states, however, have laws with similar provisions that cover smaller employers. Here are the three main areas in which a dress and grooming code can become legally iffy.

Religious Discrimination

Be careful if your dress code conflicts with an employee’s religious beliefs or practices. You need to make a reasonable accommodation to those beliefs or practices – but not if the accommodation would place an undue hardship on your business. You don’t need to make an exception to your dress code if doing so causes more than a minor cost to your business. Similarly, you needn’t make an exception if doing so would create safety problems or interfere with the rights of other employees.

If an employee balks at your dress code for religious reasons, be sure you can document your reasons for not making an exception for the employee.

The bottom line: If your dress code prohibits head coverings or hats, you may need to accommodate a Jewish employee’s request to wear his skull-cap, or a Muslim employee’s request to wear her headscarf – unless you can show it would be a hardship for your business to allow the request.

In one case, retailer Costco had to defend its rule that employees could not come to work with “facial jewelry” other than earrings – a rule based on some customers’ discomfort with body piercings. Costco had fired a cashier who saw customers every day. She had refused to remove her facial jewelry, claiming that she belonged to the Church of Body Modification. She said her religion required members to participate in piercing, tattooing and branding.

When the employee sued, the court upheld Costco’s rule, saying the company had a legitimate need to deliver a professional image to its customers. It would have imposed an undue hardship on the company to accommodate the cashier’s request for an exception to the rule. An exception would adversely affect Costco’s public image.

Racial and Disability Discrimination

Some physical appearances may be related to a medical condition. If so, the laws for dealing with a person’s disability may apply.

Suppose your dress and grooming code says “no facial hair” is permitted. You may need to make an exception for African-American employees who have a skin condition that makes it difficult for them be clean-shaven at work. Otherwise, you could be cited for violating the Americans with Disability Act – or a similar state law.

What’s more, strictly enforcing your “no facial hair” rule may have a particularly harsh impact on one minority group. This can violate the laws against racial discrimination. In the absence of a strong business reason to apply the rule to all employees, it would be prudent to make an exception for employees with a skin condition that makes shaving difficult.

Sex Discrimination

Generally, you can have different dress codes for men and women. Be careful, however, if your policy places a greater burden on women. Avoid a policy, for example, that requires women managers to wear suits, but allows men to wear T-shirts and jeans.

A dress code that conforms to social norms is OK even if it applies to just one sex. You’re unlikely to get into trouble if you require men to wear their hair short, but you don’t have a similar requirement for women.

Drafting and Enforcing Your Dress Code

Here are some tips for staying out of legal trouble:

• Have good business reasons for your rules. Explain the reasons in your code so workers know you’re not being arbitrary or unfair. Your reasons might include maintaining your company’s image, promoting a productive work atmosphere, or addressing health or safety concerns.

• Start with simple requirements. Specify that your employees must have a well-groomed appearance. Then go on to identify clothing that isn’t appropriate. This might be items such as sweat suits, shorts, jeans or flip-flops.

• Spell out the consequences of not complying. You can state the consequence in your company’s handbook in the same section that contains the rules.

• Have employees acknowledge new policies in writing. Then an employee can’t later complain that he or she wasn’t properly informed about what was expected.

• Apply your rules uniformly. But, as noted above, there may be individual cases where you need to make an exception to the rules.