The Case for Formal Dress Codes
For many businesses, particularly in law, finance and other corporate industries, a formal dress code is seen as an important part of maintaining a professional environment. This comes from the idea that if employees are wearing smart business attire (like suits, ties, heels and polished shoes), they are more likely to behave professionally and focus on doing their best at work.
For client-facing roles in particular, dressing professionally can help to create a sense of trust and credibility, with many clients associating smart attire with reliability and expertise.
In research on ‘enclothed cognition’ from 2012 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, it was actually found that subjects made half as many mistakes on an attention-demanding task when wearing a white lab coat – this is at least one concrete example of how dress code can help performance at work.
The Case for Relaxed Dress Codes
Research from Temple University in the US looked at how our clothes make us think about ourselves and behave at work. They found that when employees felt like they looked good and that their clothing was unique in some way, they had higher self-esteem which in turn made them more productive and more likely to hit their goals.
Many people also argue that comfort plays a vital role in workplace productivity. For a lot of employees, wearing uncomfortable clothing like tight collars, heels or stiff trousers can be distracting and cause them to lose focus on their tasks. Wearing casual, relaxed clothing to work, on the other hand, can help to make employees feel more at ease and less self-conscious, boosting mental clarity and focus.
Additionally, a less strict dress code allows people to express themselves, which many argue can help to elevate creative thinking.
