This is a response to an external blog post on the relationship of body art and business.

What is professionalism? Is it the way we look? Is it the way we act? Is it the way we use language to communicate ideas? Or is it all of the above? To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure. Professionalism, like every other concept in this world, seems to be subjective to each and every person. It means something different for each individual you ask.

In my opinion, I believe that to show professionalism, an individual needs to be able to control their emotions and handle situations that impose a huge amount of stress while maintaining rational thought. I do not believe that professionalism is shown by how you dress. Unfortunately, in the business world, many companies do not agree with my opinion. They would argue that it is a mixture of both. That somehow the way you look plays a part in being professional. In other words, body art and piercings equate to rowdy, rebellious, unprofessional and are conventionally looked down upon in the business world.

This blog post is a challenge to this mentality. Personally I do not have any tattoos or body piercings, but I do believe that these superficial things should not matter in the hiring process or when giving out rightly earned rewards. The blog post I am responding to discusses the changing era of tattoos being accepted but promotions being given to employees without tattoos. The blog post states that nowadays, traditional companies in America have no choice but to be lenient towards tattoos due to the fact that 49% of Americans have some sort of body art on them.

First and foremost I would like to say, BRAVO! It is nice to see that companies are changing their policies to accomadate change (even though there were most likely forced to). Body art and piercings should not be a factor when promotions are being rewarded as long as they are not offensive. Think back to a few decades ago, when the whites and blacks were separated and the blacks were discriminated against. Now think back to just a few years ago when homosexuals, bisexuals,transsexuals, etc… were discriminated against for being what they were. See how far we have come? Now, discrimination based on skin colour, ethnicity, sexuality, and background is frowned upon. I do not see a difference when it comes to body art. Body art is a way for individuals to express themselves. It does not mean an individual is less competent in doing their job than a non-inked coworker.

We can link all of this back to our class on people,culture and teams. We talked about Human Resource Management being an important part to a business. Well, HRM talks about the importance of having a diverse workplace. Instead of denying employees with body art, we should embrace them as part of our organisation and offer them the same benefits as any other employee. We should be focusing on human capital rather than how a person looks like.

In summary, I believe this image portrays my thoughts accurately.

Image Source: http://igotatattooonce.tumblr.com/post/94614208489