What Employees Need to know

The following suggestions, taken from surveys and articles about casual dress trends in the workplace, can help future and current employees avoid casual dress problems.

• For job interviews, dress conservatively or call ahead to ask the interviewer or the receptionist what is appropriate.
  
  
• Find out what your company allows. Ask whether a dress-down policy is available. Observe what others are wearing on casual dress days.
  
  
• If your company has no casual dress guide policy, volunteer to work with management to develop guidelines, including illustrations of suitable casual attire.
  
  
• Avoid wearing the following items (which 80 percent of executives find unacceptable): sweatsuits, spandex, shorts, T-shirts with slogans, bared-midriff outfits, halter tops, tank tops, and flip flops.
  
  
• When meeting customers, dress as well as, or better, than they do. 

What Supporters Are Saying

Regardless of critics, employees love casual dress policies. As a result, nine out of ten employers have adopted casual dress days for at least part of the work week. Supporters argue that comfortable clothes and relaxed working environments lift employee morale, increase employee creativity, and improve internal communication. 

Employees appreciate reduced clothing-related expenses, while employers use casual dress as a recruitment and retention tool.

What Critics Are Saying

Some employers oppose casual dressing because some say that to many workers push the boundaries of what is acceptable. They contend that absenteeism tardiness, and flirtatious behaviour have increased since dress-down polices began to be implemented.

Relaxed dress codes also lead to reduced productivity. Today, 84% of companies with 2000 employees or more have a business casual dress code, according to a survey by Mercer Human Resources Consulting. These policies exist not so much to encourage business casual as to define its limits. The courts have upheld a company's  right to enforce a dress code.

Introduction to Business Attire

  Your choice of work clothes sends a strong nonverbal message about you. It also affects the way you work. That's why many employers have mixed feelings about the current trend toward increasingly casual business attire. 

Some surveys suggest that the pendulum is swinging back to a more conservative attire in the workplace, although employers and employees have mixed feelings about what to wear to work.