Can employers dictate their employee’s facial grooming?
Where the employer has imposed relevant policies and procedures in relation to the fitment and seal of personal/respiratory protective equipment, the short answer is, yes.
Recently, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) upheld an employer’s decision to terminate an employee who failed to clean shave. This was due to the health risks posed by the airborne contaminants that the employee faced while discharging their duties.
https://chamberlains.com.au/clean-sh...get-you-fired/
The risk to exposure cannot be eliminated. TasWater has in place risk control measures to manage and reduce the risk. These include the supply and use of appropriate respiratory protective equipment (RPE), which is a type of personal protective equipment (PPE). TasWater maintains a PPE procedure, which sets out its requirements for the selection, approval, use, inspection, maintenance and disposal of PPE. The procedure is readily accessible to employees on TasWater’s intranet and forms part of the training for all new employees and training regularly thereafter. TasWater says that the procedure has always contained a requirement that an employee be clean shaven when using RPE but accepts that this requirement was not strictly enforced.
https://www.fwc.gov.au/documents/dec...2024fwc786.pdf