Starting Jan. 1, Mayo Clinic employees have official permission to look a bit edgier on the job.
Mayo Clinic has loosened its dress and decorum policy to allow for visible tattoos, so long as they do not have words or images that convey violence, profanity or sexually explicit content. However, Mayo clinic will reserve the right to judge the appearance of any visible ink.
Most other standards of dress remain the same: Employees won't be dressing down or more casually, and flip-flops and multiple piercings are still barred from being worn in clinical settings.
"While aspects of the policy are changing, employees are still expected to project a professional appearance and demeanor," Mayo spokeswoman Kelley Luckstein told Mayo's hometown newspaper, the Post Bulletin.
And that means a lot of ink could be on view.
"You'd be surprised at how many doctors and nurses you see, that you'd never imagine have a tattoo … have tons hidden underneath, just tons," local tattoo artist Holland Van Lin told the newspaper. "We have customers who (had) to wear long-sleeved scrubs every day" because of the policy.
The Rochester, Minn.-based health system has long imposed a strict dress code, but has been updating it in recent years. In 2015, Mayo ended a long-standing rule that required women employees to wear pantyhose.
