Casual office attire going, going …

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2005

This holiday season--continuing a trend that started around Labor Day--may mark the end of yet another mainstay of the happy-go-lucky dot.com era: the casual dress code. In growing numbers, employers are abandoning casual dress policies established in the late 1990s and early 2000s in favor of more formal business attire.

A number of firms nationwide are instituting new and more stringent dress codes, even going so far as to mandate employee uniforms, according to workplace authority John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., Chicago.

In one of the most recent examples of dress code reversal, Minneapolis, Minn.-based Target Corp. informed its 5,000 corporate office workers that the "business casual" dress code was ending as of Labor Day, 2004. The Target policy is very specific, detailing exactly what is acceptable and unacceptable. Employees even have access to an internal web page featuring photos of appropriate apparel combinations.

According to the Target guidelines, business suits are preferred, but men at the very least must wear a sport coat and tie if they leave their usual workspace. Those who generally are confined to a work area must wear a pressed collar shirt and tie with any sweater. For women, sweater sets or dressy sweaters are acceptable. Those wearing sleeveless blouses also must wear a jacket.

Reasons for uniform dress codes vary, but one common thread is employers' preference for a clean, consistent, and professional image among their workers. "Uniform dress codes have become most prominent in the banking and retail sectors, particularly on the sales floor at several major chain and department stores," notes Challenger. "However, the strategy to build a clean-cut corporate image and team unity may actually backfire, fostering a group-think mentality and eventually resulting in decreased productivity and employee morale.

"When you take away people's individuality, you greatly diminish their creativity and ability to think outside of the box. Uniformity in appearance tends to lead to uniformity of thought, which is detrimental to any organization that is trying to expand."

Some experts contend that the movement toward uniform and more formal dress codes is in response to the mass relaxation of such policies during the dot.com boom when some of the fresh start-ups abandoned all standards of attire.

"It is not that dress codes do not have a place in today's workplace. Certainly, those who meet with customers on a regular basis should look presentable and professional," offers Challenger.

"For those who work in back offices, it may be necessary to establish some threshold of reasonable attire, but beyond that, it has not been proved that formal business dress somehow improves productivity or quality of output.

"In fact, many dot.commers, some of whom set the bar relatively low when it came to workplace wear, consistently put in 10- to 12-hour days, and even those who did not start the business still worked like entrepreneurs. If anything, we should be emulating these workers and their work styles, not shunning them."

Yet, more companies appear to be returning to increased formality in the workplace. A survey of employers by the Men's Apparel Alliance found that 20% of corporations reinstated formal dress codes in the previous 12-month period. Nearly 60% of companies polled now maintain business dress codes that include suits and ties for men and dresses for women.

"Not only can a detailed and uniform dress code suppress creativity and individuality, but some employers might find that it alienates workers, who may interpret stringent dress codes as the company's lack of trust in their taste and judgment," observes Challenger.

"Right now, employees may tolerate more stringent dress codes and, in come cases, uniforms because they feel that their job options are limited."