Nursery group signs up to code for right of staff to wear Black hairstyles
Annette Rawstrone
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
The Halo Code, which asserts that no Black employee should have to change their natural or protective hairstyle in order to thrive at work, has been adopted by ICP Nurseries.
The nursery group hopes that by honouring the Code it will support anti-discrimination and enable Black employees to have their identities fully recognised and celebrated.
The Halo Code states, ‘Our workplace champions the right of staff to embrace all Afro-hairstyles. We acknowledge that Afro-textured hair is an important part of our Black employees’ racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious identities, and requires specific styling for hair health and maintenance. We celebrate Afro-textured hair worn in all styles including, but not limited to, afros, locs, twists, braids, cornrows, fades, hair straightened through the application of heat or chemicals, weaves, wigs, headscarves, and wraps. In this workplace, we recognise and celebrate our colleagues’ identities. We are a community built on an ethos of equality and respect where hair texture and style have no bearing on an employee’s ability to succeed.’
ICP Nurseries launched an Equality and Diversity Committee last year in response to the Black Lives Matter protests.
Head of operations and childcare at ICP Nurseries, Gill Medhurst said, ‘Our enthusiastic committee members are working hard to review and develop core resources and tools to support us all as we work towards the commitments set out in our Valuing Diversity and Promoting Inclusion and Equality policy.
‘One of the areas the Committee has explored is how we celebrate cultural identity in our Nursery communities. They were very enthusiastic to discover and adopt The Halo Code, the UK’s first Black hair code, and hope that the Halo Code will move us one step closer to a world free from discrimination, where all Black members of our community have their identities fully recognised and celebrated.’
Despite hair being a protected racial characteristic under the law, the Halo Collective has found that there continues to be a widely held belief that ‘Black hairstyles are not suited for formal settings, and may be unhygienic, messy, disruptive or unkept.’ It states that, ‘These ideas strike at the freedom and dignity of Black people and serve no purpose other than to instil shame in us about our Blackness.’
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