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Tololy just inspired me to jot these words. As a senior manager for the last ten years in my carrier, I always had to face this question from some employees. Why are we implementing a dress code? Well, to be honest at start I had a hard time explaining why. But with time and experiences I formed a sort of manual of FAQ to answer this.
So, Why are we implementing a dress code?
Depending on the company policy that I worked at, here are two points of views:
First View: In companies with a great deal of interaction with the public like telecommunications, image is very important. Many people will be turned off by staff members who dress sloppily or wear clothing with potentially offensive images or words. This type of dress can also have a serious negative impact on employee performance as well. If a coworker proves to be a distraction, the other employees will have a hard time concentrating on their work.
In companies where the staff only interacts with other employees of the same company, improper attire can project a negative image as well. If the staff does not dress as well as coworkers, there will be some resentment. At the very least, the staff needs to dress as well as the customers of the company in a corporate setting.
Having said that, if there are problems with a particular employee dressing badly or not maintaining proper hygiene, the option of setting a dress code for all staff members is an easy, non-confrontational way of solving a problem. Many employees have an aversion to possible conflict in the workplace and want to avoid any possible altercations. While this is not an optimal stance for a manager to take, we must face the fact that this is so. It can be said that establishing a dress code is an overreaction or a show of cowardice in this situation, but it can be a relatively pain free method of dealing with this problem as well as eliminating this predicament in the future.
Second View: Establishing a casual dress code is an inexpensive way to improve the morale of employees. The casual dress code is appreciated by most employees in its own right, but it also serves as a symbol of management's attitude toward meeting employee needs.
There is one strong argument against casual clothing at work, and it only applies to specific employees. Certainly, employees with client contact should wear business attire, as should those who can be seen by clients in the course of everyday business. Casual dress codes only should apply to employees who cannot be seen, or who rarely are seen, by clients. Professionalism is paramount when it comes to client contact.
It is difficult to find a strong argument in favor of non-client-contact personnel being forced to wear formal business attire. The success of companies such as Microsoft, who have casual dress codes, shows that formal dress is not necessary for success.
If management allows casual attire, it may be viewed as being more caring about employees. Allowing employees to wear casual attire at work may send one or more of the following signals to employees:
- Flexibility on the part of management,
- A willingness to do things the "new way,"
- Management does not seek to "control" employees,
- There is a system of promotion in place that does not favor those who have had the good fortune to be born in the more affluent classes.
This last point may be somewhat less obvious than the first three. By allowing employees to wear casual attire, management signals that one's social status is not a factor in promotions. Proper business dress is an acquired (and expensive) skill; one that is more easily acquired if one has an upper class background. Casual clothing becomes an equalizer in this regard.
Management may be shooting itself in the foot by not allowing casual attire. We are beginning to encounter quality people who say they will refuse to apply for a job at a company that does not allow casual clothing to be worn. Such employees may gravitate toward a firm's competitors, potentially placing the firm at a competitive disadvantage.
One final note — a casual dress code does not mean that employees should look sloppy. A casual dress code can be specific with regard to the type of clothing allowed.
I personally prefer the second policy. However, it all depends where you work at. While I was living in Jordan, I went through both situations. The bitty thing is that in both companies while they had the policy set, however no one could explain it to employees. they just adopted a dress code without really having the effort of providing a sound reasoning to their employees. If we have some problems in business sector in Jordan, I would blame it on "Human Resources" departments; if they exist. In all companies that I worked at in Jordan, while they all had HR department, but none of them really fulfilled the word "Human Resources." In both cases they were more of a policing department. Contrary to were advanced HR departments are today. I think our business sector in Jordan needs a real overall restructuring. HR is a great deal of the success of any company, and that is obvious because employees are #1 "Resource" of any company, product and services are #2.
At present, I work in a company which understands deeply this problem, and they have one of the most advanced and successful HR policies in the Middle East, if not in the world. Staring with company structure, the company invented an "Open Flat Company Structure", where there are no barriers for any employee from any level to reach and meet any other staff, staring from a "one day junior" to the "CEO". And believe it or not, this policy (and many more) played a great deal in the success of a company that launched within less than 6 months from the day we got the license, and with 80% of employees being "fresh graduate", and now within less than two years in operation have over than 30% of market share.
Anyway, I guess I can tell endless success stories of good HR policy, but that's not the subject today :-)
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I don't think that there is a relationship between the uniform requirements on one hand and the human resources on the other, they are two separate and distinct subjects. Take the army for instance it is the biggest employer in every country around the world with the exception to very few countries that don't have an army. Almost all of the army personnel are required to wear a uniform, and their uniform policy is the most strict one, yet, there is no human resources departments that belong to the army. Army recruiters are specialized army officers and not human resources officers. The army doesn't have an open door policy where you can walk in on any one in any rank at any time without speaking first with some one of a lower rank. Notwithstanding, the army is usually classified as any efficiently run corporation. I'm not in favor of an open door policy, more often than not, the person with highest rank isn't usually familiar with the details of the issues when someone of a low rank come and complain to him, in almost all cases, he will not have a readily available answer and he had to go back to his subordinate to find out what the problem is. Finally, uniforms are very expensive, not just in cost but also in maintaining them especially if the company has large number of employees. I think that most employers abandoned the idea of putting their workers in uniform because they realized that they can save a lot of money by letting their workers dress casually.
I don't think that there is a relationship between the uniform requirements on one hand and the human resources on the other, they are two separate and distinct subjects. Take the army for instance it is the biggest employer in every country around the world with the exception to very few countries that don't have an army. Almost all of the army personnel are required to wear a uniform, and their uniform policy is the most strict one, yet, there is no human resources departments that belong to the army. Army recruiters are specialized army officers and not human resources officers. The army doesn't have an open door policy where you can walk in on any one in any rank at any time without speaking first with some one of a lower rank. Notwithstanding, the army is usually classified as any efficiently run corporation. I'm not in favor of an open door policy, more often than not, the person with highest rank isn't usually familiar with the details of the issues when someone of a low rank come and complain to him, in almost all cases, he will not have a readily available answer and he had to go back to his subordinate to find out what the problem is. Finally, uniforms are very expensive, not just in cost but also in maintaining them especially if the company has large number of employees. I think that most employers abandoned the idea of putting their workers in uniform because they realized that they can save a lot of money by letting their workers dress casually.
As always, I am glad to be someone's muse. To repeat what I have clearly stated in my entry concerning this particular topic back at Tololy's Box, I fail to understand the reason behind my having to wear formal clothes to a job in which I meet with words through a computer screen. I have little or no interaction with individuals, and this makes the situation all the more absurd.
Not wanting to reiterate what I said, I think I hail the second view, discussed in this entry, and for obvious reasons. I think many firms come short of understanding the needs of their employees and hence comes failure in many other aspects of the business as a whole.
To make things sound less drammatic, a blog entry, such as the one featured in Tololy's Box, showing complete discontent with the establishment's "upstairs folks" descision is merely a simple indication of how employees feel and think when subject to such arbitrary codes. Some may argue that this does not harm the firm's image per se, I could agree with that, but it does make one reflect upon the policies in action in that specific firm.
Tololy,
Human being is naturally rebellious, we rebel against our parent, against our school teachers, and against the state strict rules and regulation, heck, we even rebel against the posted speed limit.
When our employers stipulate that we must comply with a dress code, we come up with myriad of reasons as to why dressing casually is much more productive, much more efficient than being in a uniform.
It may or may not be the case, I don't pretend to know the reasons why the employer requires their employees to dress formally, to comply with a dress code, or even be in a formal standard uniform.
I think that [standardization] might be one reason, [advertising] might be another, [distinction], [recognition], look at the the gas man, the light man, the post man, the police man, and the delivery man.
If we don't recognize them by the way they dress we probably wouldn't open the door for them.
Nice article, and I highly agree wiht this:
It is difficult to find a strong argument in favor of non-client-contact personnel being forced to wear formal business attire.
Free & casual dress code is very useful for r&d environments and where creativity is important.
and I also applaud you for making sure to explain HR policies to the employees. I wish our governments become transparent and explain much of the process & laws they come up with.
By the way, is the company where you currently where in Jordan? or is it in UAE? I'm very glad to know that there are such open-minded companies in the Middle East.
Good article Sabbah, at the risk of being viewed as blunt in essence, yet anything related to the notion of adapting any sort of "corporate" culture in Jordan -while we lack corperate foundation- aggregates me fiercely!
Companies in Jordan can loosely be segregated into three categories:
The legacy ones that have been in business for years and their just fine with how they go about their dailies,
The new-bread of companies (along with the traditionalists who opted for a makeover) with hyped "corporate" job titles, weekly problematic interdepartmental email frenzies and unprofessional bilingual corporate talk, and finally
The medium sized companies with the dilemma between going for the orthodox methods, or adapting the expensive hyped new-age “corporate” image. Of course there are the small companies that are basically too small to have any sort of issues.
Despite the fact that traditional companies have many deficiencies, but all similarly-natured problems -dress-code that is- thrive at the second category, where most employees are not in dire need for the work in hand, or at least they hardly view their work as part of their -or their immediate family- welfare regardless of the individual’s dedication & productivity at the company, especially if it was a high-profile telecom, IT or a multinational, where pride for working for such company spoils the motto of the junior staff focus on his/her career.
For all that it is worth, if we are bound to discuss "corporate" dress-code, then the matter will only bite back on the winging work force of such companies, for they have turned their companies -with the surprising consent of its management- to a mere social club where designer clothing -bought by the eagerly earned payrolls- are worn daily for the sole purpose of being seen, this also extends to the excessive morning makeup and inappropriate night-out hair styling that goes totally unnoticed, yet in a strange contrast… if one happens to sport a fist-long beard, then this is alarmingly not fit for the professional "corporate" image the company is trying to reflect!
Methinks in such companies, a casual dress-code policy is disruptive to it’s daily proceedings despite how soothing it is to the overall ora of the work-place, if I was the HR manager at my previous work in Jordan, I would have made it compulsory to wear a uniformed dark suit (for both genders) perhaps with their employee numbers painted to the back of the suit and engraved to their foreheads.
Having said that, I feel that billboard-sized cursor pointing at my direction with the script "hypocrite" highlighted next to it, as just yesterday I was hassling my new manager (I just shifted from engineering to marketing department) to exclude me from his formal suit policy in his department…
But I surely do think that –and support- crude and strict HR policies that are required to discipline the general work force in Jordan and limit the possibility of abuse and wastefulness, Yet reformation is taking place, then more fundamental and intrinsic issues must be addressed first, such as true HR development and training, berocracy-free organizational hierarchy, erudite & functional company structuring and perhaps adaptation of a save-the-planet paper-free flow throughout the company.
And Sabbah… if you're talking about the funny yellow-cum-green-branded company, then 30% is the share that shareholders would like to petty themselves with, reality speaks of a different ridicule penetration rate! Talk about dual users, low ARPU, high churn & after hours peak usage instead…
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