Dress Code Policy
Traceyd
44 Posts
Hello everyone! I am in the process of establishing a formal dress code policy for my financial institution. I was wondering if any of you could share with me a copy of your policy for some ideas??
Comments
Rather than have a strict "wear this, not that" type of policy (with a few exceptions) what has worked well for us has been a rather broad policy that reads, in part, as follows:
[I]"During business hours or when representing the bank, you are expected to present a clean, neat, and tasteful appearance. You should dress and groom yourself according to the requirements of your position and accepted social standards. This is particularly true if your job involves dealing with customers or visitors in person. Your supervisor or department head is responsible for establishing a reasonable dress code appropriate to the job you perform."[/I]
This allows supervisors to impose slightly more strict or more relaxed requirements, whatever they feel is most appropriate for their department.
It's hard to imagine in what reality a supervisor might think that some of the things you mentioned were okay, but then I remember one woman I worked with who actually thought the most "professional" outfit she had in her wardrobe was one that consisted of a skin-tight skirt slit up to there and a top so low cut she was in danger of falling out of it. It may have been considered professional attire in some circles, but I can guarantee you the profession it brought to mind for most people [U]wasn't[/U] banking!
Your top management should be talking to the supervisors about this too. If the supervisor has to go to the trouble to call someone in and even possibly send them home AND they know their own boss is noticing their department looks unprofessional and it might count against them in their reviews, they will usually get in line quickly. If all they have to do is turn it over to HR they are much less likely to follow up.
We do limit what is acceptable for business casual. In fact our back office funtions/dept's are now allowed to wear jeans everyday.
We've had back office departments that have worn jeans to work every day for 15 or 20 years, and we have to remind them every once in a while that "jeans" does not mean the old, holey, ratty ones that you'd use to paint the house or clean the garage in, or that a t-shirt with a rude saying on it is not appropriate office attire no matter how casual the office is. Seems like if we don't remind them occasionally, it definitely tends to slip.
When I'm doing a new hire training or supervisor training, the key thing I tell everyone is "If you have to question it, if you look in the mirror and say 'is this ok for work' then play it safe and go with no!"
Again, THANK YOU FOR YOUR FEEDBACK!!!!
You're definitely right about the employees who remember the days when banks had much stricter ideas of what constituted professional dress. Most of our longer-tenured back office employees are women and many of them remember when "casual" meant a suit with [U]slacks[/U] and a jacket instead of a skirt, pantyhose, and heels. Those employees certainly appreciate the idea of being able to dress more casually!
This was a much bigger event then not requiring the men to wear neck ties.
I've heard that like most everything else dress codes are cyclical - now that we are business casual year round it will probably begin to trend back to profession dress.
I've often wondered if some day the trend will naturally go back toward less casual dress. We are forcing the issue with one of our back office departments...they will be moving into our building later this year and we have told them that once they are located in the same building as corporate headquarters they will be expected to adhere to a less casual dress code. The department head was NOT happy to hear about that, I guess for years she has been touting the casualness of the dress code as one of the perks of working for her, but there is a much greater chance that they will run into board members or shareholders once they are working in this building. It's not like we're requesting overly formal dress or anything, just change jeans & sneakers for slacks and less casual shoes, but the announcement was certainly not very well-accepted, at least originally.
Traceyd,
If you're an HRHero customer, you can find a personal appearance policy at:
[URL]http://www.hrhero.com/lc/policies/317.html[/URL]
If you're an HRLaws subscriber, you can find it at:
[URL]http://www.hrlaws.com/node/1011916[/URL]
Hope this helps.
Sharon
Two issues we clarified which I think has been helpful is that we specificly state that a supervisor determines what may be "offensive or distracting".
We also clarify that if a person's appearance does not meet our dress code requirements, they need to get in compliance before we will have any discussion about whether our dress code is fair. Comply first, we'll talk later.
One thing I have observed over the years about dress codes is that if you are going to have them, you need to be consistent in applying the rules or its almost better to not have rules at all. I think the majority of the dress code problems I see are the result of supervisors who have not been consistent in holding staff accountable to meet the dress code.