Tattoos in the Workplace: An Analysis of Bias and Discrimination

Research Question and Literature Review

How do tattoos affect the workplace environment? This is the question that we based the study on. Tattoos in the workplace are a big controversy in an everyday life situation. Everyone has different beliefs on whether tattoos should be covered up or not. Before conducting the survey, we believed the subjects would find problems with employees having tattoos. Other sociologist who have studied tattoos in the workplace such as Williams, Thomas, and Christensen (2014) stated “... new research shows that such stigma and prejudice lead to workplace discriminatory effects, specifically related to potential employment and workplace policies, practices, and promotions” (p.374). It has scientifically been

proven that tattoos in the workplace have caused problems.
Methods
We decided the most efficient way to conduct the study was to issue a survey. Surveys produce a quick and easy way to provide a randomly selected audience with questions geared towards our topic of study. For convenience, we decided to conduct the survey through Surveymonkey.com. There we were able to make a survey that included ten questions to which the participants answered. Participants found the survey through links that were posted to our Facebook page. We were unable to tell which of our Facebook friends participated in the study, so therefore the study was concentrated, but random. Our research process ran very smoothly, except for a few bumps while making the survey. We had a few problems when going to input the questions, but together we resolved it.
Findings
We had a total of forty one subjects who participated in the survey.

Out of the forty one subjects, 83% of them were female. The majority of collected data was based upon the female subjects due to the fact there was a majority of females over males. As shown in Graph one, the female participants were more likely to have tattoos, while the male participants were less likely to have tattoos. Of the thirty four female participants, twenty one of them had at least one tattoo. Out of the seven male participants, only three had one or more tattoos. 86% of the participants believe tattoos have never affected the way coworkers or customers treat them. Graph two shows the majority of our subjects do not believe tattoos affect the workplace environment. Of the twenty four subjects with tattoos, eighteen of them believe tattoos do not cause any problems in the workplace. The information in Graph two correlates to how the subjects feel about covering their tattoos while in an interview. While eleven participants believe their tattoos have affected whether they get the job or not, twenty six, or 70% of the participants believe their tattoos had no effect on acquiring the job. Majority (58%) of the subjects did not find having to cover their tattoos offensive while applying for a job or while in the workplace, as shown in Graph three. We asked the participants whether they would make their employees hide their tattoos or not if they were a manager or in a higher up

position. The feedback we received from this question concluded that more than half of the subjects would not make their employees cover up their tattoos. Overall the subjects believe that tattoos in the workplace are not as big of a deal as we thought out to be. As one subject said “I believe tattoos do not determine someone's worth or work ethic. Just because you have tattoos doesn't mean you're any less of a person than someone with none. I see nothing wrong with tattooed people working in any position in any industry and frankly discrimination against them is wrong.” The research we collected from our survey concludes that tattoos are becoming more accepted in professions.

Theory
Symbolic interactionism is a theory that focuses on relationships among one another in society at a micro level. “Communication- the exchange of meaning through language and symbols-is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds” (Openstax, 2015, p.12). People who have tattoos may have gotten them to express themselves in art rather than their words. 39.02% of our participants said that if they were a manager or higher up they would make their employees cover up their tattoos and 42.11% of our participants answered that they found it offensive their employer made them cover their tattoos. Employers may be adopting Charles Cooley's perspective on the looking-glass self. “We base our image on what other people see” (Openstax, 2015, p.87). Having the idea of what a customer will see may affect the way the employer shapes the staffs appearance. Customers see a professional business that has a polished look.

Weaknesses
Our survey had a few flaws. Many of our participants may have found that having a fill in the blank question was inconvenient. The participants skipped questions that they felt did not apply to them. A participant left a response drawing attention to a flaw in our survey, the participant shined light on the fact we did not ask the question on where the participants tattoo is located and what the tattoo is of. Another weaknesses our survey had is only having ten questions. The survey also needed a wider audience due to the fact that most of our participants were female. To get more rich results in the future we would need to conduct a better survey that had more in depth questions to gather more precise results and advertise the survey more to bring in more participants to get a wider variety of results.

Conclusion
Having answered the question of whether or not tattoos affect the workplace environment most of our findings pointed to no.

Prior to conducting our surveys we thought that tattoos would have an effect. With the findings from our survey we found that most of our participants did not feel that tattoos in the workplace were a problem. Applying our research to sociology, we found Charles Cooley’s looking-glass self was a fine example for why employers may want their employees to cover up their tattoos. As researchers we have recognized the flaws in our survey so we can conduct a better one. Our results showed that tattoos in the workplace were not a big problem like we had originally

thought.