Why companies like UPS and Disney are allowing workers to show their tattoos
Research isn’t exact, but recent polling shows that as many as half of Americans under the age of 40 have a tattoo, and that has implications for the job market.
Hinterhaus Productions | Stone | Getty Images
The growing battle to attract and retain workers has led employers to adjust longstanding workplace and hiring policies, from embracing hybrid and remote work to eliminating college degree requirements. A less-covered policy also changing: visible display of tattoos on workers.
Companies including Disney, UPS and Virgin Atlantic have relaxed their dress and style codes to allow employees to show their tattoos in the workplace. Many of the moves have come over the past two years as the tight labor market that preceded Covid became even more intensely competitive during the pandemic.
When longtime Home Depot CFO Carol Tomé was named CEO of UPS in June 2020, many of her first efforts to shake up the package delivery giant centered around increasing the job satisfaction of the company’s more than 534,000 workers globally. A few of those initiatives centered on the company’s dress and style restrictions.
“We did not allow facial hair; we did not allow natural hair. So, if you’re African American and you wanted to have an afro or twist or braid, that wasn’t permitted. Our tattoo policy was more restrictive than the U.S. Army,” Tomé told CNBC last year.
UPS, well known for its regimented brown uniform and driver dress code, acknowledged that it needed to make changes that “would create a more modern workplace for our employees that allows them to bring their authentic selves to work,” said Christopher Bartlett, UPS vice president of people and culture.
Initially, UPS looked at its hair- and beard-related policies, which previously barred men from having hair that extended below the collar or beards. The adjusted policy, rolled out in November 2020, now permits beards and mustaches “worn in a businesslike manner,” as well as several “natural hairstyles.” The policy, however, says employees are expected to maintain a neat and clean appearance “appropriate for their job and workplace,” and that hair or beard length can’t be a safety concern.
Shifting views on tattoos at work
Bartlett said after that policy was well received, UPS began looking at changes to its tattoo policy. Previously, the company barred employees from showing any visible tattoos — workers with tattoos had to cover them with long sleeves or pants, or skin-colored coverings.
After a series of culture surveys, discussions with employees and other research, UPS settled on a new policy announced in April 2021 that would allow employees to show their tattoos provided they don’t contain any offensive words or images. Workers are also not allowed to have tattoos on their hands, head, neck or face.
“Tattoos matter to people, and while there was a time where people may have gotten a tattoo on a whim, more frequently now a tattoo really matters to someone; it’s part of who they are,” Bartlett said. “We wanted people to feel like they could bring themselves to work not only in their current job but as they thought about their whole career.”
Disney‘s parks division underwent a similar shift in April 2021, updating its dress and style code to allow workers to show their tattoos, which it said was part of a wider effort to make its employees and guests feel more welcome at its theme parks.
The policy change “provides greater flexibility with respect to forms of personal expression surrounding gender-inclusive hairstyles, jewelry, nail styles, and costume choices; and allowing appropriate visible tattoos,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney parks, experiences and products, wrote in a blog post on Disney’s website.
“We’re updating them to not only remain relevant in today’s workplace, but also enable our cast members to better express their cultures and individuality at work,” D’Amaro wrote.
According to the Disney cast member handbook, visible tattoos that are no larger than an extended hand are permitted except for any on the face, head, or neck. For larger tattoos on the arm or leg, employees can wear matching fabric tattoo sleeves. Any tattoos that depict nudity, offensive or inappropriate language, or violate any company policies are also not permitted.
Disney did not respond to a request for comment.
Virgin Atlantic, the British airline owned by Richard Branson, removed its ban on visible tattoos for uniformed employees in May. Estelle Hollingsworth, chief people officer at Virgin Atlantic, said in an emailed statement, “Many people use tattoos to express their unique identities and our customer-facing and uniformed colleagues should not be excluded from doing so if they choose.”
The U.S. Army has taken similar steps, rolling out an updated directive in June further expanding its tattoo allowance, including tattoos on hands and the back of the neck. The Army previously relaxed its restrictions that limited the number of tattoos that recruits and soldiers could have on their arms and legs in 2015.
“We always review policy to keep the Army as an open option to as many people as possible who want to serve,” Maj. Gen. Doug Stitt, Director of Military Personnel Management, told the Army’s news service. “This directive makes sense for currently serving Soldiers and allows a greater number of talented individuals the opportunity to serve now.”
According to the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, 41% of 18- to 34-year-olds have at least one or more tattoos.
Customers more accepting of tattooed workers
Enrica Ruggs, an associate professor at the University of Houston C.T. Bauer College of Business Department of Management and Leadership, said that there have been long-standing negative stigmas towards tattoos that harkened back to biker culture and a sense that rebellious people were the ones that got tattoos. That carried over into corporate culture, where hiring managers would stereotype applicants with visible tattoos, or where employers would worry that employing someone with tattoos would turn off customers.
However, Ruggs said recent research found that most tattoos now reflect a sense of belonging – for example, in-memorial images, callouts to their culture or profession, or a tattoo that matches one on a loved one.
Ruggs ran an experiment measuring customer reaction to workers wearing temporary tattoos. While some customers still held negative stereotypes about tattoos, the tattooed employees had just as many sales as the untattooed ones. Negative stereotypes also did not negatively affect customer perception of the organization. In fact, tattooed employees in white-color or creative jobs were looked at more favorably and competent than non-tattooed employees by customers, Ruggs’ research showed.
“Part of the argument has always been that it’ll hurt the organization, and that could actually change a consumer’s purchasing behavior,” Ruggs said. “But if the cornerstone of your business is service, that’s not changing, but allowing and relaxing some of these policies can help with employee morale and can expand who you can hire, which can help to improve employee performance. If employees are happy and they feel satisfied with their employee, they are likely to also be very productive.”
While there aren’t exact statistics regarding tattoos, a January Rasmussen Reports survey found that nearly half of Americans under 40 have tattoos. Across all ages, 33% of Americans have tattoos, the survey found.
The New York City Council currently has a bill that would look to curb discrimination against people with tattoos, including in the workplace. The bill would add tattoos to the categories in the city’s administrative code that are already prohibited from discrimination such as race or sexual orientation. While it would still allow employers to mandate that employees cover tattoos, it would require them to prove that not showing a tattoo is a “bona fide occupational qualification.”
Bartlett said that after UPS changed its policy, he noticed that several employees posted their UPS-themed tattoos on the company’s internal message board.
“When someone puts a UPS logo on them after a 25-year driving career here, that matters, and it shows that the company matters to them,” he said. “This isn’t a P&L play here, but this is about inclusion and bringing your authentic self to work.”
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Oracle’s Federal Electronic Health Record experienced a nation-wide outage on Tuesday, the Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to CNBC.
The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.
“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for Veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.
Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of the medical records giant Cerner in 2022.
The company’s Federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. Eastern that day after Oracle restarted the system.
Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s Federal EHR in 2026.
In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.
Oracle is slated to report third-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings on Monday.
Watch: Oracle CEO Safra Catz: Being number one is very important
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
Broadcom reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that topped analysts’ expectations, and the chipmaker offered strong guidance for the current quarter. The stock jumped 16% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $1.60 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
- Revenue: $14.92 billion vs. $14.61 billion expected
Broadcom said it expects about $14.9 billion in second-quarter revenue, higher than the $14.76 billion forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the last quarter rose 25% from $11.96 billion a year earlier.
The company said net income increased to $5.5 billion, or $1.14 per share, from $1.33 billion, or 28 cents per share, in the same period last year.
Broadcom’s artificial intelligence business is at the center of the company’s recent boom, which saw its stock price more than double last year. The company is one of the primary data center infrastructure vendors for AI, working both on Google’s custom AI chips as well as providing essential components for networking thousands of other chips together to develop advanced AI software.
Prior to the after-hours pop, the stock was down about 23% so far in 2025, as investors rotate out of risk partly due to concern about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Broadcom said it recorded $4.1 billion in AI revenue during the first quarter, which is 77% higher on a year-over-year basis. Those sales are reported as part of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions business, which grew 11% on an annual basis to $8.21 billion during the quarter.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said in a statement that the company expects “continued strength in AI semiconductor revenue,” reaching a projected $4.4 billion in the second quarter.
In December, Broadcom said it was developing custom AI chips with three large cloud customers. Tan said on Thursday that in addition to those customers, it had “deeply engaged” with two other hyperscalers, and are working with four other potential customers to develop their own custom AI chips.
Tan said that Broadcom closely chooses partners for developing custom AI chips who can deploy the resulting product in large quantities. “To put it bluntly, we don’t do it for startups,” Tan said.
The other major part of Broadcom’s revenue comes from its infrastructure software division, which includes software from the company’s acquisition of VMware in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023. Broadcom said it saw $6.7 billion in software sales during the quarter, a 47% increase on an annual basis.
WATCH: Chip stocks see strong performance punished by markets
Antonio Neri, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, October 20, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares slid 19% in extended trading on Thursday as the data center equipment maker issued quarterly and full-year guidance that came in below consensus.
Here’s how the company did in the fiscal first quarter in comparison with LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: 49 cents adjusted vs. 49 cents expected
- Revenue: $7.85 billion vs. $7.82 billion expected
HPE’s revenue rose 16% year over year in the quarter ending on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company was left with profit of $598 million, or 44 cents per share, up from $387 million, or 29 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier. The adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation.
“We could have executed better,” CEO Antonio Neri said on a conference call with analysts. The company had higher than normal inventory for artificial intelligence servers because of a shift to next-generation Blackwell graphics processing units from Nvidia.
The backlog for AI systems rose 29% quarter over quarter to $3.1 billion. Total server revenue totaled $4.29 billion.
HPE dealt with extensive discounting in the market while selling traditional servers during the quarter, finance chief Marie Myers said. As the quarter progressed, HPE moved to limit travel and discretionary spending, she said.
“We expect pricing adjustments may negatively impact top-line growth in the near term,” Myers said.
The company said it would implement a cost-cutting program involving layoffs over the next 18 months that will lead to $350 million in gross savings by the 2027 fiscal year. Around 2,500 employees will be affected, a spokesperson said, representing about 5% of the workforce when also factoring in expected attrition. At the end of October, HPE employed 61,000 people, according to its most recent annual report.
In January, the U.S. Justice Department filed in a federal district court to stop HPE from acquiring Juniper Networks. HPE announced the proposed $14 billion deal in January 2024. The court expects a trial to begin in July, according to the statement. The deal should close by October 2025, HPE said. In December, the company had said the transaction would be done in early 2025.
HPE called for 28 cents to 34 cents in adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal second quarter, with revenue coming in between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had looked for 50 cents per share on $7.93 billion in revenue.
For the 2025 fiscal year, HPE sees $1.70 to $1.90 in adjusted earnings per share. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted $2.13 per share.
HPE expects to update its prices to reflect higher expenses from U.S. tariffs, Neri said, adding that he has not perceived any business deterioration from President Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
As of Thursday’s close, HPE shares were up about 2% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index was down 2%.
WATCH: HPE shares fall more than 10% after mixed earnings, layoff plans
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