July 17, 2015 at 5:14 am
Worked for a company whose dress was M-Th business casual + tie. You could pay $2 per Friday or $50 for the year to wear jeans on Friday. The money went to a charity chosen by a committee whose membership changed from year to year. I always paid.
July 17, 2015 at 5:30 am
I could see "pay to dress down" as part of a creative short-term charitable campaign. Say on a quarterly or annual cycle. Maybe something like "In July employees may pay to dress down to raise money for charity X." Possibly coupling it with other things like say a food drive to collect non-perishable items for a food bank. Bring in non-perishable items or donate money to dress down. Or maybe hold a contest where the group that brings in the most gets to dress down for a week and gets a company-provided lunch on Friday.
As just a routine practice I'd be thinking, "Eh, so what?" and be less inclined to participate.
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Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.
July 17, 2015 at 5:47 am
My last job had a M-Th business casual (dress pants or dress for the women, polo shirt or dress shirt) and Fridays were "jeans" day (while still requiring the nice shirt.)
The problem cropped up (and is still on-going from talking to my wife who works there) that some people have gone even more casual (t-shirts are not allowed, yet they wear them) and have even begun violating dress code during the week. Obviously, it's a management issue more than anything, as management isn't enforcing (or enforcing equally, which is worse) their own dress code.
My current job is business casual M-F, the only time I don't have to be business casual is when I work from home some nights / weekends :hehe:
They recently started selling "jeans day" tickets, for about $2, the proceeds going to fund the annual department picnic / holiday party. I've not bought into that one.
July 17, 2015 at 6:03 am
We have 'jeans' day at least once a month for charity - it is $1.00. Just about everyone participates. The 'company' didn't initiate it, the employees did. We plan to adopt a family or two at Christmas. It's a small company and it works out nicely. We also have jeans day every Friday which is not part of the charity drive.
July 17, 2015 at 6:24 am
There was this one company that had hawaiian shirt days. Ultimately though the company headquarters burnt to the ground.
July 17, 2015 at 6:25 am
I've worked in everything business to totally casual. In most, I had the typical Mon-Thu business casual, the Friday was "casual" in that you wore jeans with the rest of the business casual dress...meaning no running shoes/trainers.
In almost every other place I've worked previous, the Friday jeans day was free. The job I came to recently has a $1 fee to wear jeans on Friday that goes to charity.
I kind of have mixed feelings about that sort of thing. I have no problem with giving to charity, but my employer picking the charity for me sort of puts me ill-at-ease.
Given, the charity here is March of Dimes which I have no issue with giving to at all...and I give every Friday even though I don't wear jeans to work here.
However, there are charities that I would refuse to donate to because of family and personal experiences in dealing with them or knowledge of how they have/do operate.
I think that employers should at least be open to allowing an employee to donate to a charity of their choices in circumstances like mine, so that they don't feel pressured to give to a charity they don't care for to be able to participate in a form of giving in the workplace and dressing with their co-workers to feel part of a team.
And BTW, $20 per quarter? Is that 5 days a week? If so, I'm pushing for that and t-shirts! 😀
July 17, 2015 at 6:27 am
Where I am now, we are required to wear business casual shirts and long pants; but those long pants can be jeans. Dress shoes are generally required. We are allowed to wear company branded T-Shirts on Fridays. Of course, Saturdays and Sundays all bets are off.
I would definitely pay to be able to wear shorts in the summer, and t-shirts (within the guidelines of 'in good repair', 'SFW', and otherwise inoffensive).
July 17, 2015 at 7:04 am
I'm lucky too in that I get to wear jeans, a polo shirt, and tennis shoes to work everyday. We're contractors for a US Air Force communications unit and work in a computer room environment. Not everyone wears jeans and tennis shoes all the time, but many of us do. Now if we could classify our "casual day" as shorts and sandals... 🙂
July 17, 2015 at 7:29 am
We have a business casual policy Monday thru Thursday, (polo shirts khakis pants) Friday you can wear jeans, still need a shirt with a collar. For years we have had various charity fund raisers where you could buy jeans stickers, you could use these when you wanted. As others have said this is completely voluntary, so if you don't want to support that charity then don't give. The main goal of these types of things is to raise awareness of a particular charity or cause and try to help the best we can.
We recently had a survey the company wanted the employees to take, and it we had 100% participation then we would get to wear jeans for a month. And we made it and it was a nice perk.
Just about 15 years ago we had to wear dress shirts and ties every day. Some days I swear I thought that tie was choking the life out of me. So getting the business casual was a great perk, the jeans day now are just icing on the cake. Never having to wear a tie to work, priceless. 😎
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we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us
Don't fear failure, fear regret.
July 17, 2015 at 7:36 am
About 10 years ago I worked at a hospital and they had $1 casual Fridays. The charity was themselves so kind of a conflict of interest: make a rule people hate then get them to give their money back to get around it 😉 I then worked at another hospital and they had their techincal staff have to dress up while doing site surveys while constructing a cancer centre. So not only formal clothes but not dressed appropriately for the task.
My question is: if you can live with casual Friday's then clearly dress pants and shirts aren't as necessary as you'd have us believe. I get that you might want executives or sales people to dress up but the people working in back office positions? I no longer will work for a company that has onerous rules (if they are setting rules for the colour of your dress shoes how open minded are they going to be to process flexiblity?) unless I'm well compensated for it. I imagine some others must be the same way which means they are only making their recruitment effort/cost higher.
July 17, 2015 at 7:41 am
The company I work for has an internal charity that the money goes to. It is used to help employees in need. The concept is kind of nice.
The cost is $1 per day. They offer random days throughout the year that you can opt in. There doesn't seem to be any reasoning behind when the days are - they aren't necessarily holidays for example. Recently they offered one particular team the ability to do casual Friday's for a period of time, I think a year but I am not sure. For this you could even use payroll deduction for one or two pay periods.
I don't participate because I am more comfortable in business casual than jeans. Our buildings are a mix of new and old. I work in areas where it is 80 degrees, all the way down to in the high 50's. Jeans just don't work with that kind of variation. Typically I wear a sweater in the summer, and short sleeves in the winter, keeping a sweater around if I need it.
While these kind of perks can be nice, I wonder if some companies don't offer these zero cost perks in order to offset real costs of paying fairly and appropriate work loads. I believe I have posted hear in the past about a company I previously worked for that preached every year about us putting in "just 10% more hours" and how that would benefit us at bonus time. Your year end bonus could be up to $500 for only 200 more hours this year, 400 next year, et cetera. That is as simple as offering to give me a dollar if I give you five dollars first. As noted above, they offered things like casual Fridays to make it look like they were offering benefits, but the real benefits were far below standard. In two years there I saw greater than 50% turnover.
So my point is that companies need to be competitive with employee compensation. If they are, sure, go ahead and offer casual days. But focus on tangible benefits and compensation first. Their employees will be more productive if they feel they are compensated for what they do. In my opinion some of the most successful companies have achieved this balance.
Dave
July 17, 2015 at 7:44 am
Michael Lysons (7/17/2015)
Astonishment at now having to pay for the "privilege" of wearing clothes to work.Given that, effectively, both styles of dress are "dress codes", why not pay for all of them?
GIVE THE CHARITY ALL OF YOUR MONIES!
I saw a job ad recently where the employer offered discounted parking for employees. I am amazed by this. If you want me to work there, why do I have to pay you to do so?
Note, this was not a big city where the only parking is in another company's parking garage. It was corporate owned lots!
Dave
July 17, 2015 at 7:59 am
Ours uses an option payroll deduction (1$/week) - the employees get to vote on the charity each month and the company matches whatever the employees put in.
I thought it a reasonably nice touch. It's just one of several things the company tries to do to keep being good corporate citizens in the communities where our offices are. While I could certainly see potential for the "jaded" view, this is one area where I thought we were talking the talk AND walking the walk.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
July 17, 2015 at 8:21 am
patrickmcginnis59 10839 (7/17/2015)
There was this one company that had hawaiian shirt days. Ultimately though the company headquarters burnt to the ground.
If they move my desk one more time, I am going to quit! LOL 😛
My current company is casual dress everyday and I am so thankful for that.
At my old job, they did the jeans on Friday for certain charities. It was a hospital, so the days were in recognition of different conditions, and not only did we give to the charity, but they did education about the condition and treatments for it. For example, there is a Go Red for Women day that is sponsored by the American Heart Association to educate about women's heart health. They sent out educational flyers about heart health. We donated $5 to wear jeans and got a pin.
July 17, 2015 at 8:43 am
Hmm... I would probably be insulted if the company I was working for tried to charge me to dress a certain way. If there's a dress code there's a dress code, if wearing jeans is acceptable it shouldn't matter what day it is or whether a fee is payed.
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