Dress Codes
This is definitely a dinosaur that has to go. Two things that have made this a dinosaur:
(1) Official dress-down days (typically on Friday). If it's okay for employees to dress down one day a week, even when there are clients around, then why not dress comfortably *five* days a week?
(2) More and more workers are seeking work situations where they can telecommute from home.
If you want to have an idea as to how far Corporate America is willing to go to control your appearance, Click Here.
Some may believe this dinosaur has already disappeared because their workplace has no dress code, or does it?
One Employee Handbook has a section screaming with the heading "DRESS AND GROOMING STANDARDS" below which it quietly declares that there is no formal dress code.
Yet, that is not the end of it. The section continues, elaborating as follows:
"... all employees will dress in a manner consistent with good hygiene and safety. Employees whose jobs require them to come in contact with clients, volunteers or the public are expected to wear attire consistent with that worn by persons dealing with the public in similar capacities."
If the tone of the preceding quote sounds more legal than friendly in its tone, there clearly is a formal dress code, however unspecified it may be. Know that the Employee Handbook despite its facade as a guide for personnel is actually a document designed to protect the interests of Management. The only document that employees can rely on with any degree of confidence is a fairly negotiated union contract.
An interesting article at USAToday presents the opposite view and argues that it is important to have some kind of dress code standard. Although its ideas may seem logical, one suspects that they are based on faulty science.
Performance Evaluations
Performance evaluation is really a misnomer because these days (and maybe it's always been this way), they are used often for purposes that have nothing to do with performance but everything to do with office politics and/or "bottom-line" issues. Employees may demonstrate excellent behavior and yet still receive poor evaluations, especially if Management determines that the payroll needs trimming. A poor evaluation can be just the tool to motivate an employee to seek work elsewhere. If the employee fails to read in between the lines, the eval can still be of value to Management as serving in part as justification for a dismissal.
I would, therefore, strongly advocate that the performance eval go the way of dinosaurs and become extinct. Performance is really a non-issue these days when employees are viewed as liabilities the longer they remain on the payroll. Or, if employees must be subjected to such evaluations, I think that it would be very interesting if employees could provide annoymous evaluations of their respective supervisors. I wonder how the supervisors would be rated -- would they measure up?
I thought it might be amusing to show a few samples of performance evals that range from the late '70s to the present '90s. The following evals are from businesses involved in academics, medicine, and finance. I thought you might enjoy seeing that not all companies/instituions ask the same questions. Also, perhaps the questions may be different as a sign of the times.