Jordan: A New Government in the Making
The newly appointed Prime Minster has been announced, being Marouf Bakhit. Naseem Tarawneh thinks that this might help the path to reform. Khalaf says about the newly appointed PM, “Being self made, one wou…

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…

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.

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.

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.