Your Strict Dress Code is Hurting Workplace Morale
My first job out of college, I was working at a typical corporate America cubicle farm. Like most recent graduates, I had to make the uncomfortable adjustment between academic and office life: early risings, long meetings, mundane tasks and reporting to a boss. However, what stung the most about my new job was the dress code.
As stated clearly in the New Employee Handbook:
Male Employees – Must wear long-sleeve, button down dress shirt, tucked into dress slacks with a firm crease, necktie, and dress shoes/socks.
Female Employees – Must wear blouse with dress suit/pants or long dress/skirt which extends at least three inches below the knee, close-toe shoes with heels no higher than one inch.
Friday Attire – Men are not required to wear ties, but still must wear dress shirt/slack. At NO time are employees permitted to wear jeans, shorts, T-shirts, sneakers or open-toe shoes.
*Failure to comply with the dress code will result in employee being sent home without pay and/or other disciplinary action
These inflexible rules didn’t exactly boost workplace morale for me or my colleagues. Did I realize that I was joining an old company with a deeply conservative culture? Sure. I shouldn’t even be complaining, really; banks, law offices and accounting firms have long required employees to wear suits & ties at all times, even mandating that jackets be worn whenever you’re away from your desk.
However, here’s what I don’t get: we worked in a small satellite office away from corporate headquarters. We had no clients coming into the office, ever. No senior managers or board members on-site. No live video conferencing. Heck, we didn’t even work in teams, we mostly we did individual projects alone all day. Why, then, was it so crucial to have us adhere to a strict dress code?
Having worked with countless corporate groups with the same corporate rules, I still don’t have a good reason. Sure, there’s an argument that people will take work and jobs more seriously if they dress seriously, especially those fresh-faced new hires who’ve spent the last 4 years partying. But you know what? So long as employees aren’t client-facing, you’re doing them a disservice by making them play dress-up, in the name of “adhering to the rules.”
Think about it: assuming you’ve done a good job hiring; your people will want to do good work. By making them wear ties and such for no good reason, you’re not only guaranteeing they’ll be uncomfortable at work, but you’re also imposing an unfair economic burden by requiring them to buy nice clothes – especially true among younger staff, who likely don’t have the salary or existing wardrobe to comply with the rules. Not exactly a winning recipe for a happy workplace.
Employees already have enough to worry about, especially in these nerve-wracking economic times. Don’t add to their woes by enforcing an unnecessary dress code.