Nowadays, many companies allow their employees to dress freely in the workplace, while others claim that dressing unprofessionally leads to lack of professionalism among the staff. Despite the drawbacks of this development, I believe that this permission may be totally positive development in terms of effectiveness.
There are several disadvantages of dressing casually at work, one of the main one is social comparison. Allowing casual dress increases comparison among workers, since every worker has a different personal financial condition in society, without dressing rules, employees dress as they want. Financially poor people might be unintentionally jealous of those financially better. As a result, it deteriorates the concepts of mutual friendship and collaboration between workers, and it can lead to a decrease the effectiveness of workers. In Japan, for example many Japanese companies underwent such consequences in the past, so that they established to dress uniform all employees at work.
However, dressing casually can have several advantages. One of the main benefits is productivity, dressing in a casual way can enhance the productivity of work, because many uniforms might be discomfort for employees, which can lead to a reduction of effectiveness at work, while dressing casually allows staff to feel freer and comfortable. Casual clothes mostly have a link with satisfaction in terms of psychological aspects, as dressing unprofessionally gives freedom to employees, as a result it can facilitate productivity at work, and increase job satisfaction.
In conclusion, despite the negative aspects of this development, such as a lack of professionalism. I believe that advantages outweigh the disadvantages, since productivity and job satisfaction are more crucial than social comparison, so I think this totally positive development.