Dress Codes Are Evolving - Both In and Outside the Office

My mom was an airline stewardess in the glory days of PanAm. People would dress up to go on the plane. That is a distant memory if you have flown in the past two decades. The rise of hybrid work has been well-documented both here and elsewhere, but often less publicized is the massive effect that the proliferation of off-site work arrangements has had on work attire expectations, taking an already occurring evolutionary trend and massively accelerating it.

‍

Where a worker is conducting their work can make a substantial difference in how they dress, of course, and it is no surprise that nearly 4 out of 5 employees (79%) who work hybrid schedules dress differently depending on their work location - whether that be at home, on-site, or in a third place.

‍

Perhaps more interesting, however, is how on-site and in-office dress codes are becoming increasingly more casual at the same time. For example, the most recent polling data from Gallup indicates that only about 3% of US workers wear a suit to work - down 4% from the 7% of respondents who did so in 2019. 

‍

Another survey indicates that the proportion of offices with formal dress codes in the US has fallen from 1.2% to just 0.2% over the last 4 years.

‍

What was once a widely observed professional standard across an array of industries has now become an outlier, and the trend lines for business casual wear in the workplace, while not nearly as drastic, may ultimately lead to a similar fate. 

‍

This recent piece from BizWomen takes a broad look at some of those trends that are emerging with regard to workplace attire:

Work Attire By The Numbers

• Current Work Attire Breakdown: As of the most recent data from Gallup, about 41% of US workers currently dress in business casual attire, while about 31% wear casual clothing, and 23% wear uniforms on the job. 
• Employee Perspective: Nearly 3 out of 4 employees believe flexibility in dress code expectations is vital, which includes just about the entire respondent pool if you exclude employees who wear uniforms at work. Further, in a separate poll almost 1 in 4 workers claimed that they would be willing to accept a cut in salary or wages in exchange for the loosening of attire-related restrictions and a more informal dress code generally.
• Talent Attraction: There was a 20% swing in the number of job postings that mentioned business-casual work attire between 2019 and 2022. In January of 2019, about 40% of job postings referenced business-casual attire, but only 3 years later in January of 2022, just under 20% of job listings did so. Over that same time period, the percentage of job postings that referenced casual attire climbed from about 60% to nearly 80%. 
• Dress Code Evolution By Gender: 85% of men respondents reported noticing a casual evolution in their professional in-office work attire while 77% of women said the same.
• Back-to-Office Perk: Nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) claimed that their resistance to spending more time in the office would be reduced significantly if they could wear the clothing of their choosing within reason.

‍

You can read more about this topic and find additional insight on the subject from industry professionals here.