An innovative tactic for promoting Brand You is through how you dress. As I wrote in a blog entry innovative thinking should be prized as a tool to generate solutions that achieve profits for businesses. Visionaries are in the vanguard in how we dress as well. Restricting the type of clothes, a person wears on their job can backfire.
A more relaxed dress code can promote gender equality. A lot of women prefer to wear pants not skirts or dresses. Allowing staff to dress in their own style within the bounds of what’s appropriate can boost morale. Forty-five percent of firms that instituted a casual dress code saw increased productivity.
Adhering to a strict dress code rules out hiring a diverse talent pool. Individuals who don’t dress in a traditional style are shut out of the workplace at classic companies.
For those of us loathe to wear a suit on the job I recommend getting a job in a public library or other non-corporate environment. I can remember all those suits I wore in the 1990s to my insurance office jobs. Good riddance to the 1990s—and to dressing in boring, bland outfits with no pizzazz.
In the coming blog entry, I’ll talk about a real issue in the workplace for people who don’t conform. Though it begs the question as to whether there can be a “norm” from which others deviate.
I say: hold on. Not so fast with the norms.
WorkingAssets 