360 degree feedback system is an arrangement wherein an employee receives feedback from all roleset members around him, which includes his superiors, his immediate sub-ordinate, peers and the customers.

The purpose of the process is not to appraise performance but to prepare developmental plans for the individual concerned. Using the inputs gaps in competencies can be identified and relevant training initiatives may be charted for the employees concerned. The system works well when used at senior management levels because the cost to administer them is very high.

Commonly referred to as multi source feedback multi-rater feedback this arrangement varies from the traditional performance appraisal system as feedback is sought from all sources and not just the immediate supervisors.

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The Global Benefits Attitudes Survey, conducted by Towers Watson has spoken. Employer driven retirement plans have emerged as one of the top driver of retention among employees. It has been noted that Retirals have emerged as the top source for income for superannuated employees in India. Savings in property and investments are the other sources.

Over the years the trend in India has undergone a shape shift owing to the re-emergence of retiral benefits as an important employee retention tool. Indian employees generally work till they are 60 years of age and traditionally these plans were not the priority for them. This is because of the inherent support system that existed in the traditional Indian family as the next generation were expected to take care of the elders. However, with the breakdown of such structures coupled with increasing inflation and the rapid urbanization has led to employees seriously focussing on their own retirement corpus.

The survey reflected the view of more than 2000 respondents in India and almost 1700 were a part of some kind of retirement savings plan.

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The advent of the twenty first century saw major change that brought about a sea change in the culture of IBM perhaps for the first time in the company’s 100 years of storied history.IBM’s famous dress code consisting of the “dark suit” with a sincere tie finally gave way to the business casuals. This change was brought about by the slew of companies that came up during the late 20th century as college sophomores turned into the potential work-force. It is because of this new HR challenge that IBM actually changed their veritable HR policies. As of now more than 40% of the workforce at IBM works from home thereby slightly underplaying the need of dressing up in the truest sense.

On the topic of dressing casually Ruchika Tulshayan from Forbes has an interesting view point. She believes that even though if an organization has embraced the culture of casual dressing it would be pertinent for the employee to draw the line at one point. Her contention is that it is essential that an employee is able to segregate his work from his leisure. The reason being is that sooner than later the employee will bring his weekend persona to his work place. Dr Karen Pine observes that dressing casually can also lead to an employee feeling less focussed and alert. Clothing has a very deep cultural connotation engraved in our collective psyche, so when we put on a certain type of attire our brain responds to the stimulus much like Pavlov’s dog did to the dinner bell.

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CNN reports that in 2010 a national survey conducted by the Centre for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania suggested that the respondents valued appearance second only to “communication skills”. Lizandra Vega, author of “The Image of Success: Make a Great Impression and Land the Job You Want” observes that wearing the week-end plans on “Casual Friday’s” is a very obvious mistake people make.

With the cultural revolution of liberation that made rather revealing outfits and high heels acceptable in the society came another concept called image management. Several image consultants note that wearing a revealing outfit at work immediately projects a signal that the person is trying to grab attention. Such a image as Chris Hauri, founder of Mirror Image, a Chicago-based image and identity consultancy notes that it also conversely impresses that such an image projects that the person is not interested in grabbing attention for her work.

On the matter of shoes it can be observed that a heel is perceived to be uncomfortable. The wearer is immediately perceived as someone who can’t pitch in as a team player because half the time the wearer is distracted in order to maintain her balance. It is of prime importance to refer to the employee manual in case of any doubts. More often than not such issues would be dealt categorically there.

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Is the adage “First impression is the last impression”, still valid in current corporate scenario, is a big question, which creates confusion time and again. It is a very interesting question in today’s business environment. When the dot com boom was at its peak, it became a norm to be able to wear anything to work. It was so because many dot com and entrepreneurial ventures relaxed their dress codes and allowed employees to come to work in clothing normally reserved for vacations and weekends.

First thing that is noticed when you enter a conference room or an office or an interview room, is how are you dressed? So, this kind of dress code might work for smaller organizations and non client facing roles but it has its own demerits. For example, if there is no dress code policy followed within an organization then people might wear whatever they want to, to their workplace. It will distract other employees and affect their performance. A defined dress code also helps in keeping companies image and perception in general public under control. An inappropriately-dressed employee can also prove to be a distraction for clients and potential clients too – reflecting negatively on the overall impression of the company in what all recognize as a very competitive business climate.

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“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”

-Mark Twain

The purpose of this article is to closely inspect how personal style in terms of clothing and image management at work-place has evolved over this years. More specifically how formal organizations adopted the sub-culture of wearing ‘Business Casuals’, a term where the second part seems to be a strong anti-thesis of the former. For this purpose we will be delving into relevant literature over the years, including very recent ones from reputable sources. Then we shall try to draw a parallel between the literature and our findings as demonstrated in the previously in this report. According James Laver the collective perception about a costume ranges from Indecent 10 years before its time to smart in its time to Hideous 10 years after its time. This idea has been resonated in an article published recently in Forbes where the author categorically mentions that one of the cardinal sins of dressing up for work is actually following ongoing trends in the fashion circuit. The ongoing trends of the circuit are there to be adopted by the general population perhaps 10 or 15 years down the line. Therefore as per Laver’s timeline of acceptance of a given costume wearing this kind of outfit to work will leave an impression of a person being indecent or worse shameless. None of which is a positive epithet to carry around particularly for a recently recruited manager at a respectable firm.

“Irving Goffman” suggested that the concept of a proper dress has different levels of significance based on situations. The major factor to be kept into mind while dressing for work is its purpose – It is not to attract attention of the opposite gender at a bar but conversely it is actually used to compliment and accentuate one’s professional ethics.

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A rejection of a job offer is a nightmare for any recruitment department of a company. The company selects a candidate after investing considerable amount of time and energy towards the process. However, when the candidate finally decides against joining the company it affects the recruitment team in terms of possible slippages towards the hiring goal and the organization which gets deprived of what it perceived to be the right-fit for the role.

Industry experts speculate that one of the greatest drivers behind this kind of behaviour is how the brand of the organization is perceived. One of the most prominent open secrets within any industry is actually about the culture of a particular organization operating therein. However most fail to acknowledge the fact that communicating the Employer Value Proposition to the prospective candidate during the interview is as important as the discussion of the compensation and rewards. Companies should ideally train the interviewer regarding the image he or she should portray regarding the company during the interview.

In conclusion, if people can leave jobs because of the manager they can also take up a job offer because they like the manager. Training the managers who more often than not are the final interview takers on the softer aspects of hiring would pay immense dividends to the organization in terms of its Human Capital.

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We often associate technology with efficiency. Input goes in and the output comes out. However, the mistake we generally do is that we often equate efficiency with effectiveness. A process doesn’t become self-aware once we automate it. For the process to actually provide us with any meaningful input we have to first understand that the process we are actually automating is actually sound in the first place.

We talk about how the way we do business is changing and how the world as we know will still are using the same questions that were developed by Henry Ford. The questions regarding “Where did the Candidate Work?” or “What was the length of employment at your former organization?” actually serve as no indicator of a person’s capability however even then the responses to these questions are used to serve as red flags. Is it always necessary that a person who has served his former employer for a long duration has loyalty as a trait? Is it not possible that the person was inefficient enough to not get a decent job in any other company?

There can be no anti-technology stand in today’s business environment. However, by scaling up a deficient process by the means of technology will only compound its problems and scale up all of the problems that were inherent to the process. Mere replication is not going to solve any issue in this case.

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