Oxford researcher asks: Can bosses demand you go to work naked?

Writing on the BBC website, David Edmonds, an award-winning Presenter and Oxford University Researcher, has asked a question pertinent to all HR staff: can an employer dictate your dress-code?

Well, not exactly. Rather, Edmonds asked if an employer could demand that all staff arrive for work naked? Whilst that question might elicit screams of ‘no’ from earnest HR practitioners, no Human Resources staffer would rightly question an employer’s reasonable right to dictate to a staff member that they should wear a uniform. Or, would they?

The similarities between an employer demanding that a staff member turn up naked to work and an employer demanding that a staff member dons a certain dresscode are obvious: in both cases it is deemed proper that to complete work, the employee has to dress, or not, in a certain way.

However – I hear your earnest ‘buts’ – there is one striking difference, that of whether the dress code is reasonable and is implemented fairly.