What Workplace Dress Says about a Company

While employees cannot easily change the dress code set by a company, they can change the way the office functions in regards to business attire. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Target have drastically different work attire than KPMG, Deloitte, and Proctor and Gamble. This difference in clothing style may not impact success, but it does impact how consumers view a company.  At Google , for example, employees get time for free internet surfing to check emails, update social networks, or make calls (Google.com). They also have a longer lunch break where work is not allowed to be discussed at all. On the other hand, KPMG, for example, has one short lunch break for an hour and many websites are blocked and personal email checking is banned. According to GoogleSets The Standard For A Happy Work Environment, the work environments that function the best are those that realize that a company is only as good as it employees. By feeling comfortable around co-workers, employees will dress to impress all days of the week because to them, relationships are built on confidence and first impressions can make or break business relationships.  While reading a post by Lauren Conrad, I found that her 10 commandments of workplace productivity encompass personality, poise, confidence, and worker relationships.

Here are Lauren Conrad’s 10 commandments:

• Thou shalt never let your outfit outshine your work.
• Thou shalt abstain from clothing with obnoxious logos.
• You shall avoid all sexy and revealing clothing.
• Thou shalt dress like your boss. Emulate the highest-ranking worker in your company. This doesn’t mean steal their style. Rather, base your office attire on what they considers appropriate. Take a cue from the people in positions you aspire to have someday. They don’t say, “dress the part” for no reason.
• You shall always dress to impress—even on “casual Fridays.”
• You shall always use your best judgment. Consider your work environment and dress accordingly. Anything you can wear to a club should never step foot in an office. If you’re unsure about an outfit, it’s best to err on the side of caution and go with something else.

Personal style is like a canvas of art yet you have to make sure you stay in the lines of your company's dress code. It is about looking good, feeling good, and doing good (gramatically, well). Your fashion emulates your work and by personalizing the dress code, you will surely improve the way you feel at work. As Coco Chanel said, “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” What are some of your styles that make you feel confident, yet poised at work?

Related Links:

http://www.laurenconrad.com/post/work-it-9-to-5-style

It's Casual, Business Casual

Business Commandment Number One: There is nothing casual about business casual. Many companies view business casual as a conglomeration between causal weekend clothes and formal business separates.  While business casual is applicable to a wide variety of workplaces, it is often interpreted in varying degrees. For corporations that have expectations to wear pant suits daily such as State Farm, where I interned this past summer, business casual should be more formal such as this outfit by Lauren Conrad.

For me, it meant wearing a State Farm t-shirt with nice black pants. With corporations that have a daily sales uniform, like Coyote Logistics, business casual may be dressing in khakis and a nice polo such as this look by Polo Ralph Lauren

According to Eric Davis, a writer for the Institute for Productivity, workplace dress affects morale more than it affects productivity in the workplace. His argument from a global survey completed in 24 countries shows that “45% of workers think that someone wearing casual clothes is more productive that someone wearing business attire, yet 55% of clients perceives someone wearing more proper workplace attire as more productive.” To put it plain and simple, when acting as an employer, men and women would rather wear comfortable clothes; however, when acting as the customer, men and women would rather have their employer wearing business professional.  While I cannot give concrete rules to decide whether to wear business casual or professional, I can tell you that by using WWCD (What Would Your Company Do), you can exemplify the professional image of your company, while still feeling confident in your own clothing. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe it." Although the term, business casual, cannot be defined, it can and DOES define your personal professional image....There's nothing casual about that!

Dress codes as business codes?

Growing up, I remember seeing my parents going to work every day after sending me off to catch the school bus. My mom worked for a pharmaceutical company and wore dress pants and a company t-shirt, while my dad owned a jewelry store and always had his best suit on to impress his customers. While they both were in the sales industry, their workplace dress varied dramatically. What were the roots of this difference in dress code and how does it affect the environment in which we all work today? While Human Resource departments cannot generalize how productivity in the workplace changes based on clothing, they can explain how workplace attire affects other people’s perceptions of workers based on their dress. According to Dan Ariely, a leading behaviour economist, humans often look at the outward appearance of workers such as salesmen, doctors, lawyers, and UPS drivers, and derive a perception about a company based on what their workers are wearing.  Whether it is the newest Gucci or fireman suit, workers can display the respect they have for their company based on how they present themselves.

By looking good and feeling comfortable in their work attire, workers boost their confidence and productivity in the workplace. In the next few blogs, I will explain the do's and dont's of business professional versus business casual and explain how productivity in the workplace is affected by these two types of dress.