Dress code in the telesales and telemarketing business

There is always the problem of the dress code policy in call centers. Some call centers impose a strict corporate to business casual to informal to “anything goes”. Management almost always encounters resistance from employees about the dress code they want to implement. This friction has caused some call centers to relax a bit by forgoing corporate in favor of casual dress, giving employees some leeway in how they want to dress. And the result? There was a significant decrease in the quality of employee work.

On the other side of the extremes are call centers that don’t have any dress code. The result? They have nothing but headaches. Your employees would appear in clothing that is generally considered inappropriate to the point of being indecent by showing too much skin. This shows that centers need to implement a dress policy because it has an impact on the way you do business.

So the question now is: “What is the correct dress code?” The answer to this depends on the nature of the business. An ideal dress policy that would be acceptable in most call centers is business casuality. Some people may argue that dressing up isn’t really necessary because the customers they interact with on the phone don’t see them at all. But what call center employees don’t see is that dressing in a business-casual style gives them a professional image, and this professionalism is reflected in the way they conduct themselves on the phone. Also, if customers visit your call center quite often, wearing business casual clothes certainly helps make a positive impression. Call center employees come from diverse cultural backgrounds, and when it comes to dress code policy making, it is best to involve the employees themselves. This will not only make things easier for management. It also ensures that the code to be established is acceptable to all and will be faithfully observed by all. Fines or penalties should be imposed on those who do not observe the proper way of dressing.

Allow employees to take a breather once a week with a “wash day.” You can turn the business casual policy around by giving employees the option, at certain times, to pay a small amount of money in exchange for the freedom to wear what they like (but in accordance with the “code” of dressing appropriately) and donate the proceeds to charity. Just because there are some who don’t take the opportunity to dress casually doesn’t mean they don’t want to support a good cause. It means that they are simply comfortable in what they wear.