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R&D teams within HP Enterprise Services received memos this week reminding them about the company's rules regarding workplace fashion. "If you aren't dressed like the models in the posters that HP displays around its locations, then your appearance is sapping the productivity of the workers around you," was one summary of the memo by an anonymous source. Many employees have become comfortable wearing t-shirts and shorts on a regular basis, and it is believed that "scruffy-looking" engineers might alienate visiting customers.
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HP Enforcing Dress Code for R&D Employees
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday July 26 2015, @02:23PM
Easier solution - don't take your customers to the engineers, bring selected (and pre-warned) engineers to your customers in a controlled setting. Then your staff and customers can both be happy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @02:38PM
Easier solution - don't take your customers to the engineers, bring selected (and pre-warned) engineers to your customers in a controlled setting. Then your staff and customers can both be happy.
This.
Or, design your facility (including employee uniforms) with customer visits in mind from the beginning. A classic example of this is Penske Racing. Behind every car bay (work station) is a storage room. When the race cars are taken apart for service, the removed parts are immediately taken into the store room, there are never parts or tools laying around in the shop. Roger Penske can bring a sponsor through the shop at any time and it always looks spotless. This must cost a small fortune, but he's the owner and he must feel that the investment is worthwhile.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 26 2015, @04:27PM
A common trick at my last employer was for employees to have a nice-ish shirt with the company logo hanging in their locker or cubicle that they could throw on in a moment's notice to instantly look professional in case customers visited.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @03:03PM
The visiting people is a side issue. Have you worked in an office with 10K+ people? Professionalism is the fine graphite dust that allows the human gears to mesh without jamming.
All it takes is for one asshate to dress down. Really down. Ride a bike to work and not change. The perception changes. Language changes. Addressing people as though they are friends rather than people paid a decent salary to work together. Then other people follow suite. Moral drops.
If you have not experienced this, well, great. If you work somewhere that does not have thousands of people, great. If your work supports casual clothes then great. Otherwise, dragging one's ass down to the story to buy slacks ($20) and a shirt ($10) is not hard.
Yes, after a decade of working with someone for whom a dress code of basic work slacks and shirt was just too hard, I am jaded.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @05:24PM
i love it when other people project their vanity on others.
what makes you comfortable must make everyone comfortable so why should anyone complain. Why should anyone be forced to work in a place with thousands of individuals, when you can work at a place with 1 individual ten thousand times
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2015, @07:53PM
There was a dress code. A standard to be met. For years as a junior I met it with decent boots, black trousers with dark blue or black polo. Good enough to scrape in under the definition of smart casual.
You are right. These people do not have to work with thousands of other people. In most cases they do not want to work at all. I came to the conclusion after watching these people, yes we have several, that this was just another way to buck the system.
Workplace assholes. Until you have had to deal with a nasty one none of this may make sense or seem important.
Look, I sat near one guy who just stank for half the day. Block your nose kind of problem. Would it have hurt him to change out of his riding gear into work clothes? This is one of the situations for which a standard of dress is set.
If you disagree then feel free to say why.
Otherwise, then, we are paying people six figure salaried to do a job. Part of that job is to meet a miminum for how they present themselves. If they do not like it then they can leave. No one is forcing them to stay. Over 100K salary and they can't be bothered to put on neat casual clothing.
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Sunday July 26 2015, @07:55PM
Moral drops.
Are those "drops" like in a set of rapids? Or "drops" as a measure of liquid, like eyedrops? Or candy or cookies, like gumdrops? Or, at the far end of possibility, did you mean "morale"? But then you go on.
dragging one's ass down to the story to buy slacks
Was this a story like an amusing anecdote, or a story like a level on a building? "Dragging down" suggests the latter. But why could one buy slacks there?
Yes, after a decade of working with someone for whom a dress code of basic work slacks and shirt was just too hard, I am jaded.
Hmm, when appearances seem to matter so much, words much more make the person than clothes, especially here on SoylentNews.
(Hey! That's the ticket! We need a SN Dresscode! And does this development at HP have anything to do with Carly Fiorina appearing in "Sharknado 3: Oh Hell no"?)
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday July 26 2015, @03:21PM
Sorry, can't do. If you read TFS really-really careful, you may note it's about R&D teams within HP Enterprise Services.
Now, put this together with the fact HP isn't an enterprise for some time: you'll suddenly understand why those customers need to come in contact with those engineers - otherwise what could the latter use to research and develop?
(deep down, you know it makes sense - grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford