Dress Codes at Work

There’s been quite a few posts in the blogosphere recently about dress codes at work. Wayne Turmel kicked off this discussion with his post titled “Wearing my big-boy clothes ” which was very quickly followed up my many other bloggers that were defending the ‘dress code’ or railing against it.

A few other more interesting posts were from The Mad Gringo titled “Cranky Middle Manager Loosens Up “. Lisa Haneberg over at Management Craft followed up with a topical blog post titled “Dress Code Part 2 ” and now The Slacker Manager has a post titled “What’s Your Management Dress Code? ” authored by Phil Gerbyshak .

All of these posts are worth the read and quite entertaining and thought provoking. However, the one that I like the most and agree with entirely, is Lisa Haneberg’s “Dress Code Part 2” post. In the post, she says:

Let people be comfortable. Create a culture where thoughts, not labels, impress.

Perfect Lisa. Absolutely perfect.

Of course, there are reasons to implement a dress code, but I believe that most adults can determine what is appropriate to wear to work and what isn’t. Why not build your culture in such a way that allows your team to determine how they should dress and act?

I’ve worked for companies who had no dress code and companies that had a very formal suit & tie dress code and found that it isn’t the dress code that makes an organization succeed…its the people and the culture that make the organization succeed.