UPS Ends Ban on Natural Black Beards and Hairstyles

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The shipping company is lifting many of its long-standing strict rules on the personal appearance of its employees who interact with the public – primarily its army of delivery drivers.
The changes relax previous strict limits on facial hair (no beards for most employees, and limited whiskers above the crease of the lip) how long men can wear their hair (no more than collar length) and hairstyles (no afros or braids). While styles should always be tailored to the business and not pose a safety concern, these specific limitations have been removed.
Wednesday’s announcement also includes the lifting of gender regulations, including rules such as the length of uniform shorts. The new rules, first published by the Wall Street Journal, were posted on an internal company website for employees.

“These changes reflect our values ​​and our desire to make all UPS employees feel comfortable, genuine and genuine while providing service to our customers and interacting with the general public,” said UPS. in a statement, adding that the company was “committed to continuing to make UPS a great place to work for all of our more than 500,000 employees around the world.”

UPS is also certainly motivated by its efforts to add the staff needed to handle the increase in the number of packages associated with the surge in online shopping caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our CEO, Carol Tomé, listened to employee feedback and learned that changes in this area would make them more likely to recommend UPS as an employer,” UPS said in its statement.

Tomé, the first woman to lead UPS, told investors on a recent conference call that the company has increased training for its employees, including to tackle unconscious bias and promote diversity and inclusion, “for ensure that our actions correspond to our values ​​”.
UPS had been criticized that its rules of appearance, particularly the hair guidelines, constituted a form of discrimination. In 2018, he agreed to pay a fine of $ 4.9 million and enter into a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to allow greater freedom to beard and beard. long hair to those who requested a religious exemption.

“The EEOC alleged … UPS has not hired or promoted people whose religious practices conflict with its appearance policy and has not provided religious accommodations,” the EEOC told at the time, who also alleged that “UPS separated employees who groomed beards or hair in accordance with their religious beliefs into unsupervised positions, at the back of the establishment, without contact with the customer.”

The company then decided to allow religious and medical exemptions for facial hair.

But Wednesday’s announcement addresses a broader problem of unconscious bias reflected in the rules, according to Lucinda Duncalfe, founder and CEO of AboveBoard.com, an executive recruiting company that promotes diversity.

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“These policies are holdbacks from a different era and reflect the biases that hold back progress and performance,” said Duncalfe, who hailed the change as “excellent news”.

“It never made sense that ‘natural’ hair was banned,” she added.

Almost 300,000 UPS employees are represented by the Teamsters union, and the old rules applied to many of them. The union welcomed the change.

“We are very happy with that,” said the Teamsters statement. “The union has challenged previous guidelines as being too strict on several occasions over the years through the grievance / arbitration process and contract negotiations. We have offered neatly trimmed beards in several previous national negotiations.

It has been a busy year for UPS. The volume of parcels handled by UPS increased 13.5% in the third quarter compared to a year earlier, and the company hired 39,000 new permanent employees in the second quarter of 2020, and intends to hire more than 100,000 additional seasonal employees for the peak holiday season. .

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