Violating the dress code once a week
Having a dressing-down day at work may help create a more relaxedatmosphere and ease hierarchical structures
Dress-down day has become de rigueur in the City and firms of lawyers have taken to turning up to work dressed in their civvies. Bankers Morgan Stanley have hung up their stuffy pin stripes in favour of chinos and Fred Perry shirts. Solicitors Wiggins & Co is among the growing number of professionals who have done the same.
The trend is spreading to accountancy firms. Ernst & Young has no official policy on dress, but some of its regional offices have elected to opt for the casual look at the end of the working week. E&Y’s Reading office has operated a dress-down policy on Friday since the beginning of the year. After a trial period, its 211 staff recently voted to make it permanent.
The policy was adopted at the suggestion of the office managing partner Gerald Russel. He said: ‘We got the idea from our clients, a lot of whom are high-tech US-based companies, who have been doing it for a while.’
The rule is that if you are not seeing a client on a Friday you can dress down. If you are going out to a client you wear a suit. Russel said: ‘I always keep a suit in my office.’
Brett Gill, office manager at E&Y in Southampton, admits to plagiarising the idea from the Reading office. ‘We recently restructured the way we operate. We now work in teams dedicated to servicing clients.
‘By introducing an informal dress-down day, we have found the optimum way to get people who are from different disciplines working together.’
According to Russel: ‘It brings down barriers by creating a more relaxed atmosphere and easing the hierarchical structure. This can be particularly important in partnership structures. It’s not sloppy or unprofessional.’
He added: ‘On Fridays, the dress code is “business-casual”. This is loosely interpreted. But we expect the staff to police it themselves and say when they think someone is going over the top. The only time that the level conservatism slipped was during hot summer days, when people came to the office wearing shorts.’