I was recently involved in changing a dress code that required a lot of cubicle dwellers to “dress professionally.” The change was to “clean jeans, nothing sexually suggestive or political and no sweats”
There has been no noticeable change in productivity that I am aware of.
I really wish somebody would come up with some objective data.
A few years ago, during the dotcom boom, one of the investment banks (J.P.Morgan?) announced some changes. One was that they were putting in a computer lab for employees to tinker around in, the goal being to keep the best and brightest from leaving Morgan to strike it rich (OK, richer) in silicon valley. The other change was the relaxation in the dress code. The company gave their reason as something like “we want the best minds”.
I took that to mean either a) Smarter people prefer to dress casual; or b) People work smarter when they dress casual.
I would second what Mangetout said: the control element plays a big factor. A company won’t force employees to dress a certain way unless they can.
Also, what NutMagnet said about ‘well-dressed’ being an arbitrarily defined concept: I work in research now, where everyone dresses pretty casually. But a few years ago, I worked in a more formal place. The standard was that someone wearing a button-down shirt, tie, and dress pants was ‘dressed up’, while anything else was ‘sloppy’, even if the ‘sloppy’ clothes were much nicer. It was actually like an unwritten uniform (there were a lot of ex-military).
Spy Magazine did an interesting piece in the early 90s on strange company dress codes, which included a few such unwritten uniforms. They weren’t all at conservative, quasi-military companies: there was some edgy upscale women’s clothing retailer that required a specific casual look: pretty much anything was OK, but it had to include black leggings.
What about c) by not automatically ruling out people for whom casual dress was a high priority, they had a larger pool of people potentially working for them and thus a better chance to get the smartest possible people, some of whom presumably prefer casual dress?
Point taken Godot22.
For those of you looking for data on the topic, I’d recommend John Molloy’s book Dress for Success. He did a lot of experimental research for his book, and he describes the research as well as the findings in the book. The angle was more on how dress influenced individual career success rather than that of a company as a whole, but his research showed clear trends about how people react to others based on how they are dressed. No, this is not how I believe we should judge people, but apparently a fair amount of it goes on subconsciously whether we like it or not.
I’d recommend this book to Dopers interested in the topic, because as others have pointed out earlier in the thread, there is a lot of opinion and conventional wisdom on the topic. Dress for Success is at least an attempt to have a fact-based discussion. I suspect a lot of people who haven’t read the book think it is only a how-to book like so much self-help, but “don’t judge a book by its cover” seems ironically appropriate here.
I read this book a long time ago, back when I started college. I’m sure it is still applicable in certain fields, and in some instances in all fields. However, in much of the computer business they really don’t care how you are dressed, and showing up dressed to the nines is much more likely to arouse suspicion rather than respect.
“Business casual” in the computer industry is jeans and tshirts (preferably the free kind you get at trade shows). “Dressed up” (for a visit from a conservative client) is dockers and button-up shirts (preferably the free kind you get with your own company’s logo). Suit and tie is way off the scale. I’ve met (and/or worked with) quite successful people who looked like motorcycle gang members, or had green teeth (never heard of a toothbrush?), or “fashionably” messy hair, or whatever. Executives with pony tails and earings. Really. All that matters is what is between your ears.
All of the worst jobs I’ve had I interviewed for wearing a suit. About 10 years ago I decided that the suit wasn’t doing much for me, except perhaps making me more attractive to companies that value how I look in a suit above all else. Since then, I interview wearing whatever I have on that day. I’m quite successful and I have a dream job (high salary, work from home, very little travel, friendly boss, interesting work).