Dress Code For Your Field Employees

Posted by David Chism | Thu, Mar 1, 2012

 Dress Code For Your Field Employees
My dad told me this sto­ry years ago: He drove to one of his job sites to check on his painters. They were doing a beau­ti­ful ren­o­va­tion project on an old crafts­men-style home. How­ev­er, a com­peti­tor was doing a sim­i­lar job next door. He smiled as he thought, Boy! I’ve got some great employ­ees. They are so clean, effi­cient and tal­ent­ed! They are noth­ing like my com­peti­tors doing the work next door.” The com­pe­ti­tion was not in any uni­form, and the painters looked scary. My dad then took a real­ly good look at his painters and the vehi­cles they were dri­ving. He real­ized that they did­n’t look much bet­ter. He knew some­thing had to change and that image and appear­ance is vital­ly impor­tant. It was after this one job that he went back and began devel­op­ing com­pa­ny let­ter­ing for his vehi­cles, bet­ter look­ing shirts, yard signs and so on. Did it pay off? Absolute­ly. He is con­sid­ered one of the most rec­og­nized paint­ing com­pa­nies in the San Diego area and known for qual­i­ty and his pro­fes­sion­al and clean staff! What type of dress stan­dard do you have for your staff? It’s the lit­tle things that mat­ter most, espe­cial­ly in the infor­ma­tion age we live in now. Your painters, car­pen­ters, or field employ­ees should def­i­nite­ly have a uni­form, even down to com­pa­ny approved boots. Yes boots! My dad’s painters had a dress code for the com­pa­ny hats, pants, hair length and shirts, but they did not have a shoe pol­i­cy. We even had a pol­i­cy that said how the pants had to be worn! So as I drove around check­ing on his staff, I noticed the painter’s shoes (most of them) were slop­py look­ing. Many of them had the ten­nis shoes or boots with­out laces. It just looked unpro­fes­sion­al. I went back and told my dad we had to add boots to the dress code stan­dards. We wrote up a list of approved boots and gave he employ­ee $20 towards the pur­chase of bet­ter look­ing boots. A few bought the $20 boots from Wal­mart where oth­ers went out and bought Red Wings. I must say, the staff was excit­ed to dress more pro­fes­sion­al­ly. I think it gave them a sense of pride that they were dif­fer­ent and bet­ter. One final thought. My dad often quotes this phrase, You get what you inspect, not what you expect!” So now as he dri­ves to job sites, he inspects his com­pa­ny stan­dards and dress codes. He inspects to make sure the yard signs are up and clean. He checks to make sure the vehi­cles are in good shape, the job sta­tions are orga­nized and that his staff are dressed for suc­cess. Your Turn What are your thoughts on Com­pa­ny Dress Codes? How do you han­dle this with your staff? Do you fol­low up and inspect rather than expect your employ­ees to always abide by your stan­dards? Would love to hear your thoughts.

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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