Is a Casual Dress Code Right for Your Business?

“Office based employees often have to follow strict business dress codes, which involve suits for men and business dresses for women. However, in the modern work environment, many businesses are moving to a more relaxed dress code as opposed to formal attire. There are benefits and drawbacks to installing a casual dress code in relation to both your employees and your clients. If you’re left wondering whether or not a casual dress code is right for your business then our blog provides some top tips.
Be Specific
One reservation that businesses have about relaxing their dress code is that they feel people will take it too far and turn up to work dressed inappropriately. One way that you can avoid this situation is to be specific about what you expect as casual wear in the office. For example, you could specify that it still needs to be a casual shirt or specify that you won’t allow ripped jeans. Also making it clear what you expect women to wear and specifying a minimum skirt length can also help to ensure people don’t come to work dressed inappropriately.
Client Meetings
Another major reservation for businesses is that casual dress code doesn’t give a professional impression to clients during meetings. The prospect of losing business to high-end clients because of your dress code can often be enough to put businesses off. But you can still impress clients and have a casual dress code by asking employees to change for business meetings. Your clients often won’t walk through all your staff areas and only the employees they are meeting with will need to wear business attire.
Staff Satisfaction
There are a number of benefits that a casual dress code can have for your staff, but one of the most important is that it can save them money. Casual clothes are often much cheaper than business attire so your staff will save money when buying clothes for work. Formal suits often need to be dry cleaned as well so your staff will save on expensive dry cleaning costs. Many people are much more comfortable when wearing casual clothing too so you can improve staff morale.
Weather
Employing a casual dress code can be a massive benefit in the winter months, as it easier to wrap up warm. The cold and wet weather we often experience in the UK isn’t ideal when you are wearing suits or formal business attire. It can often be much more practical too if you allow employees to wear boots and other footwear that makes it easier to get to work in bad weather conditions. It can be a good idea to relax your dress code in the case of weather extremes. Allowing employees to wrap up or remove layers during cold and hot extremes can massively boost morale.
As long as you clearly outline how you expect your employees to dress then you should be able to install a casual dress code. There are plenty of benefits to installing a casual dress code but one of the biggest benefits is staff satisfaction. It can be hard to keep valuable employees in the modern climate but lack of job satisfaction is one of the biggest reasons for people leaving their current role.”