JAMAICANS are very big on dressing up for the workplace. Especially our women. So much so, sometimes it seems that we are more interested in the outward appearances than what the employee actually has to offer by way of the quality of their work.

If you listen closely you will hear people being praised and admired for how they dress to come to work rather than the actual work they are being paid to produce.

Good grief! How do we encourage our employees to crack the corporate dress code without breaking the bank and dressing to express themselves rather than to impress?

Make no mistake about it: how you look communicates strongly about you even before you open your mouth to speak. For sure initially, your appearance is likely to communicate very loudly to your audience. Think about all the value judgements you make about someone you have just laid eyes on.

You decide in less than a glance the class, creed and destiny of that individual. In an instant you decide whether that person is rich, or poor, sane or insane (although these days you can’t tell just by looking) or has a future with you or your company. Your response to the person and perhaps acceptance or rejection of them is often based on just that one first look.

So, of course, when we go on that first job interview we make sure that we smell nice and that we are at least properly colour co-ordinated to ensure that our potential employers will see that we are a likely fit into their company’s world.

After we land the job we enter into a whole ‘nother world because we have to keep up appearances, especially if the company we work with does not require us to wear a uniform. The trick is, in keeping up the look, especially if we are not the beneficiary of clothing allowances or other such company largesse.

So in the corporate world, the person who is dressed to impress, who smells appealing; with every hair in place, nicely made-up face; brand-name (or knock-off) shoes, dress and even hair weaves, is more likely to have your attention more than that other person. We might be slightly intrigued but less interested in that other person who might not look as sharp; is perhaps make-up free and wearing shoes whose cost, that do not seem to have required the Courts layaway plan.

While dressing up might be nice, my vote goes to the employee or executive who dresses appropriately for work. Dressing appropriately means adhering to your employers’ corporate dress code. It means not going over the top in your dress. If at your level everyone wears suits made from simple fabrics, don’t go for the power suits that you have to mortgage your souls to purchase. It also means not going below the dress code as well. Flip-flops are a no-no (unless you work on the beach), and please don’t be the one to let management ban dress down Fridays for the rest of us because you made a very strict interpretation of the word ‘down’. That means that you will have to leave the cut-out jeans for the weekends and believe it or not the rest of us are not that intrigued about seeing the immodest parts of your anatomy so do, wear outfits that cover you well.

Dressing appropriately is important too, especially if you are high profiled which is why the style critics and the ‘Fashion Po-Po’ came down harshly on Gen-yer and Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg when he wore a hoodie to a New York meeting ahead of his company’s Initial Public Offering. There are others, like Virgin CEO Richard Branson who are noisily rewriting the rules of corporate dress.

Some will say, ‘God bless him,’ while others will have the Fashion Police and various dubious style gurus on speed dial for the anarchy in the work world that Branson is no doubt unleashing as we speak. Having gone into the banking business with the acquisition of Northern Rock, a British bank, Branson decided that his employee should ditch the tie.

Writing on Entrepreneur.com he says, “In British banking, few things strike terror in the heart of a customer quite as much as the prospect of facing a tie-wearing, three-piece-suited bank manager across a huge mahogany desk. So we redesigned the banks. One of our first changes has been to start to remove the traditional counters and replace them with informal seating areas.

We also thought that the staff’s formal business attire was almost as solid a barrier to customer-friendly experiences as those counters were.

Our newest group of Virgin employees were told they could dispose of the ties. This would suit me — I have always hated ties, maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose.”

A good rule of thumb too is to figure out the standard dress for the industry and try to stick close to how other successful persons dress, based on the level that you are at within your own company. The organisation with which you work often mirrors the industry as a whole and takes its cue from the players therein. Try to crack the code that will help you to dress for success.

Yvonne Grinam-Nicholson, (MBA, ABC) is a Business Communications Consultant with ROCommunications Jamaica, specialising in business communications and financial publications. She can be contacted at: yvonne@rocommunications.com. Visit her website at www.rocommunications.com and post your comments.