3 Factors to Consider When Creating an Employee Dress Code

Maybe you want to improve morale by having your team dress alike, or perhaps you want to have an easy way for your customers to know who the business employees are whenever they are standing in a crowd. An employee dress code isn’t uncommon today, but to ensure you have an efficient dress code that matches everyone’s values, you need to consider certain things. You want to create an inclusive and respectful dress code that allows everyone to remain professional, and you want to make a dress code that people want to wear. After all, as the song says, ‘you are never fully dressed without a smile, and your employees should be smiling when they wear your clothes!

Look At Religious and Gender Exceptions

If you have a multi-religious company, you might have some people who choose to wear some clothes over others due to their faith. Some types of religious headgear might need to be worn no matter what, and some women might prefer to wear pants over skirts or shorts. Additionally, if you have employees who are transgender or non-binary, they might have issues with needing to dress up as a specific gender that they don’t identify with. Not only is ignoring your employee’s gender against the law, but it is also just another problem you need to deal with.

Making exceptions based on the employee or better yet, keeping the dress code vague and allowing for freedom of expression in clothing is a good idea. Allow your employees to come up with their own expression of business casual or semi-formal, and if issues arise, talk to the offending employees one by one.

Consider Employees With Disabilities

If you have employees with disabilities, you might find that your employee dress code doesn’t consider their needs. For example, someone with a broken arm might need to wear a looser shirt or a skirt for ease of use, or an employee with a wheelchair might require slip-on shoes instead of shoes with shoelaces to have the best shoes for working in a restaurant. Again, keeping your dress code vague or providing options based on the employee can be very helpful to combat this, and you need to make sure that they are dressing in a way that does not hinder them at work.

Trust Your Employees

Most employees have a good fashion sense about them and also have good common sense. They won’t all suddenly come into your workplace wearing sweatpants because you caused the dress code to bend towards semi-formal. Trusting your employees and knowing that they will make intelligent decisions based on your dress code as well as the standards of your company can be hard to do, and if a problem does occur, you can speak to the employee directly.

Create an Easy & Fun Dress Code For Everyone!

It might take some extra work and require you to be slightly hands-off from the rest of the process, but you can very easily create an employee dress code that is fun and easy for all your employees to wear. Whether you want your workers to stand out in a crowd or dress professionally for a professional work environment, a good dress code can help improve your employee morale. You might even find that once the dress code is established, more work will be done, and your employees will have a pep in their step moving around the office!