The Real Meaning of Business Casual
By Erin Douglass
During your morning commute, you spot a guy in jeans and a T shirt, a Twenty Something in leather pants and trendy sweater, a woman in a tweed skirt suit and a man in khakis with sport coat and tie. Here's the surprise: They're all headed to workplaces with Business Casual dress codes.
If you're confused, you're not alone. What people wear to the office, the conference, the meeting has changed dramatically over the past 30 to 40 years—from suits minus ties to suits minus jackets, to khakis, jeans, shorts and short skirts.
Through these change fraught times, many workers were often left wondering what to wear to the office.
The Many Definitions of Casual
Casual dress varies widely across industries, positions and geographical locations. What's appropriate relaxed garb for a clerk at a highpowered urban law firm may be interview threads for a programmer at a Silicon Valley software company. Even HR managers from similar walks of work don't often agree on the meaning of business casual.
Sherry Masonave, image consultant and author of Casual Power: How to Power Up Your Nonverbal Communication and Dress Down for Success, defines Business Casual as "a relaxed version of the traditional business look." Kim Johnson Gross, the voice behind Ask Kim on ChicSimple.com, dubs Business Casual clothing as that which combines "the simple and stylish, the relaxed and the tailored, ... and quality and budget bargains." A recent survey on the topic by HR Executive, on the other hand, pinpointed Business Casual as simply "no jeans, T shirts or sneakers."
Macy's West's Marketing and Promotions Manager Shonaree Michael says her company avoids the term Business Casual in its new corporate wardrobe consulting program, Fashion 500. " We try to use the term corporate wear," says Michael. "'Casual' has thrown people. We want to convey the idea that workers still need to be polished."
As Ann Humphries, President of Eticon, an etiquette consulting firm for business, stresses, "Business Casual isn't social casual. This isn't what you wear to dig in the yard."
They Sure Look Casual Around Here
An August 2000 HR Executive survey teased out truths about the current state of workplace dress. Casual rules, with two-thirds of respondents—or 68%—saying their companies welcome laid back attire. Of those, 60% may don casual dress every day of the workweek, not just on oft casualed Fridays.
Five years ago, however, the Casual Club would have filled a larger room. A 1995 survey commissioned by the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, and Levi Strauss Co. revealed that 90% of HR respondents said their companies approve of casual clothing on the job, either every day (33%) or occasionally (42% once a week and 11% only on special occasions).
The reason for the policy change: The sour taste of too much casual, too much of the time. The casual trend, fueled in large part by the boom in Internet companies and their informal work cultures, took the workworld by storm in the late 80s and 90s. But employers, increasingly uncomfortable with what was showing up on employee backs and feet—and perhaps wanting to distinguish themselves from crash and burn dot coms—turned tail on Always Casual in favor of Casual on Occasion.
Why Casual Works, Mostly
Participants in the HR Executive survey highlighted a number of ways they feel casual dress positively impacts the workplace, including that it:
- improves employee morale (77%)
- sweetens recruiting success (53%), and
- increases the sense of community (47%).
But not everyone embraced casual dress. More than half of respondents felt workers were more prone to gabbing when clothed in casual togs. A handful of others—17%—believed relaxed wear reduced respect for management, while 12% said they felt it lowered the quality of work.
Heck No, We Won't Go Casual
G. Neil, a South Florida distributor of human resources products and an affiliate of HR One, is one company that doesn't plan on jumping on the casual bandwagon. The company follows a code of business dress—shirts and ties for men; dress suits, pantsuits and slacks with blouses for women—Monday through Thursday and Business Casual on Fridays. Says HR Director Kathy Jones, "What we've found is that youth today, many of whom are coming into their first office jobs, do not have a perception of what is and what isn't appropriate."
The company's diverse workforce responds to the dress code differently. "Workers with more seniority don't want to go casual," remarks Jones. "But younger workers, especially those in the call center who never see people, push for casual." G. Neil's response: "We tell them the code helps to set a business aura."
But even at a happily dresscoded company, all is not set in stone. According to Jones, G. Neil has considered instituting a summer uniform—Dockers and a company logo shirt—during the hot and muggy summer months. For the moment, however, that idea remains in the closet.