Casual Dressing and the Workplace of Today

The advent of the twenty first century saw major change that brought about a sea change in the culture of IBM perhaps for the first time in the company’s 100 years of storied history.IBM’s famous dress code consisting of the “dark suit” with a sincere tie finally gave way to the business casuals. This change was brought about by the slew of companies that came up during the late 20th century as college sophomores turned into the potential work-force. It is because of this new HR challenge that IBM actually changed their veritable HR policies. As of now more than 40% of the workforce at IBM works from home thereby slightly underplaying the need of dressing up in the truest sense.

On the topic of dressing casually Ruchika Tulshayan from Forbes has an interesting view point. She believes that even though if an organization has embraced the culture of casual dressing it would be pertinent for the employee to draw the line at one point. Her contention is that it is essential that an employee is able to segregate his work from his leisure. The reason being is that sooner than later the employee will bring his weekend persona to his work place. Dr Karen Pine observes that dressing casually can also lead to an employee feeling less focussed and alert. Clothing has a very deep cultural connotation engraved in our collective psyche, so when we put on a certain type of attire our brain responds to the stimulus much like Pavlov’s dog did to the dinner bell.