Do You Need a Guide to Underwear?

Back at the beginning of the the year, Swiss banking giant UBS got rid of its 44-page employee dress code. Covering everything from trimming toenails to wearing skin-colored underwear, the guide rivaled any military's regulations for how to wear the uniform. Somebody must have finally gotten the idea that if people are smart enough to be working for UBS, they're probably smart enough to dress themselves.

You can kind of understand why their leadership put the dress code in place. UBS has an image it wants to maintain (which was even explained in the code) and felt the dress and appearance of its employees needed to be standardized to achieve that. In a creative firm, though, you've got a different kind of image, and you don't need a dress code to support that, right? Well...

Think about the impact that your Creatives' dress can have on your workplace. The appearance of the workplace (including that of the employees in it) helps set the tone for the office and is often assumed to reflect the organizational culture. What does your Creatives' appearance say about them? About you? Does it affect people's ability to work? If everyone's half-naked in the summer, that might be a little distracting. Team members might have trouble working together if one is offended by the foul language on another's t-shirt. Try to identify the problems that clothing might cause you.

Of course, it's not just internal concerns. Some creative firms work directly with customers in the workplace, and even for those who don't normally do that, well, clients do come into the office sometimes. Regarding the former, I remember the receptionist at a friend's hair salon a few years ago who was wearing a t-shirt announcing to the world that she's a bitch. I'm not sure that was the first thing clients needed to see, and some of the stylists caught some flak from their clients about it, which didn't help the intra-salon harmony. Even if you think you're just a bunch of folks hanging out in the office, remember, outsiders do venture into your realm sometimes.

This doesn't mean you necessarily need a 44-page dress code for your Creatives, but it helps to have some guidelines. It can head off problems before they arise, and also give you some basis for stepping in when you see something that crosses the line; you just need to define "the line" first. If you leave it completely up to people's judgement you have a harder time holding them accountable for not meeting your standards, since they didn't know what your standards are. Talk about your expectations with new employees so they know how they should dress rather than waiting until someone goes too far without realizing it, leaving you in a position where you're liable to create a conflict. "Casual but not obscene" at least gives them an idea, and they'll figure out the details by watching others.

Of course, all this concern about dress codes just makes telework that much more attractive of an option.