Corporate dress codes: help or hindrance?

A recent article with a misleading headline has been making the rounds on social media the past week claiming a PwC receptionist was sent home for refusing to wear heels. For those who share articles without reading them – let me first clarify for you:

1. This was in the UK;
2. It was PwC’s third party agency who are engaged to provide reception services who sent Nicola Thorp home, not PwC; and
3. It’s not a PwC policy for women to be required to wear heels in any role.

Nevertheless, the story has sparked some interesting debate online and in my teams at PwC in Sydney. Therefore, I wanted to share my observations and perspective on the issue having worked in professional services for a number of years. My work often includes spending a lot of time at our clients’ offices and observing their respective dress codes and attitudes.

Firstly, I was surprised at how many of my female colleagues said, “Good. If you’re on reception – you should wear heels”. Personally, I don’t think it should be part of any uniform anywhere for women to wear heels. By the same token, I don’t think men should be required to wear ties or only black shoes or only blue or white shirts as is the case in some corporate workplaces. These restrictions are certainly not the case at PwC, where our dress code of “Modern Professional Dress” is rather relaxed compared to our peers and is a better reflection of the times (and climate) in which we live. 

For example, I’m not clean shaven. That's not to say that my facial hair looks untidy... I have a shaped beard which can actually take longer to keep tidy and sharp than it does to clean shave. However, I had an experience in June 2015 where I was to receive an award from PwC Australia’s CEO, Luke Sayers, for my contribution to the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion strategy.

When I asked two of my mentors (one internal and one external) if I should clean shave before the event they both said, “yes, definitely”. So I did.

Just before I received the award, a video I featured in (with beard) was played so when I came up to receive the award, the presenting Partner said my name followed by, “and he’s shaved for the event!” When I said a few words of thanks, I joked that my mentors has suggested I shave to meet the CEO… So I was pretty chuffed when Luke came up to me after the event and said, “Mate, next time… don’t shave.” So I haven’t had a clean shave for work ever since.

So what is and is not acceptable in a professional workplace?

Well, I’m writing this article from a nice Melbourne hotel whilst here for the weekend. When I arrived at reception, did I expect the female concierge to be wearing heels? No. Did I expect the male assistant to be wearing a tie? No. What I did expect, though, was for those providing the service to be well presented (verbally and visually) and ready to do their job.

Back to the topic of shoes in the workplace, I have female colleagues that never wear heels and they always look sharp and professional. Likewise, I see other females in our workplace who always wear heels and often look uncomfortable in them and others whose heels are scuffed and broken and damage the wooden floorboards in the lobby. They'd all be better off wearing nice, high quality, flat shoes.

This isn’t a gender thing either. I see male professionals around the city and in our building wearing poor quality slip-on shoes that haven’t been polished in months (or ever) and I wonder how they can take so little pride in their appearance.

I once went to a presentation at Google – who have “you can be serious without a suit” as one of their ten founding principles. Lovely thought – although our presenter was wearing flip flops. His choice of footwear didn’t detract from the content of his presentation but did I want to see his feet as he spoke to us? Not really.

Call me old fashioned but I choose to wear a full suit, shirt and tie to work every day (except casual Fridays). I was recently attending internal training all week and a colleague asked me, “why are you so dressed up for training?” I simply said, “Because you never know where you might need to go or who you might meet”.

As I was leaving the office that night, my boss asked me to come watch him deliver a presentation to one of our key clients. Afterwards, he introduced me to the founder of this iconic fashion brand which was a huge honour. She kissed me on the cheek with a smile and said, “Hello darling”. Would she have done that if I was presented poorly? Probably not.

So, are my shoes or my colleagues’ shoes a reflection of our ability to do our jobs? Absolutely not. I do believe, however, that the way we present ourselves and our professional brands says a lot about us. If we do not care about how we present ourselves, then our clients (rightly or wrongly) will unconsciously assume that we don’t care about the quality, delivery and presentation of our work.

In essence, there are some instances where prescriptive dress codes are valuable such as on construction sites or in the medical profession. Ultimately though, I think individuals in professional services should be given the flexibility to present themselves however they like within broad guidelines.

The key consideration should be to put yourself in the shoes of your clients, your customers or your stakeholders and ask yourself, “What do they expect from me?”