Establishing an employee dress code – DSP 58

The episode where Graham and Ashkahn discuss the nuances and rational behind an appropriate float center uniform and additional attire.

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, “dress code?”

Ashkahn: Good, well-formulated question.

Graham: It’s succinct. I like it. For us, “no.” period.

Ashkahn: Period, possibly exclamation point!

Graham: I guess that’s not even really true. We have the most minimal dress code that you possibly could … Wear something and, preferably, it doesn’t have holes and isn’t dirty.

Ashkahn: Okay, there’s a few parts to this dress code situation, I would say.

Graham: Yup, there’s the question mark, there’s the dress, and there’s the code.

Ashkahn: Alright, let’s work on the dress for now. There’s dress codes from your perspective of running a business and the customer service experience. Then I’d also say there’s some kind of HR liability stuff with dress codes that comes into play. Which one do you wanna talk about first?

Graham: There’s only two? I thought you were gonna say more perspectives.

Ashkahn: No, that’s it. What else?

Graham: There’s the actual convenience of cleaning up float rooms from the employee standpoint of convenience dress codes, I guess. Dress suggestions, I might suggest.

Let’s talk about the legal side since that’s really boring.

Ashkahn: This varies from place to place. You should really look at your own local rules about this, but there are some places that have rules for closed-toed shoes, for example. It’s mostly about shoes, I think. Do you need to wear shoes, or can you go barefoot? There’s a lot of people who work in float centers who go around barefoot. That might be something that you need to look into in your area.

I know for Oregon, I don’t think it matters that much. We looked into it, but there’s other states that have a lot stricter, basically, liability issues. If someone’s not wearing shoes and something happens to them, especially ’cause you’re dealing with chemicals, if you’re using hydrogen peroxide or something like that, or even things like FilterFresh that are made of different acidic materials, that’s not stuff that you necessarily wanna drop on your feet.

I think a lot of float centers are probably taking glass out of their area already in terms of cups and stuff that customers drink, concerns about broken glass, about dropping things that you’re cleaning with or heavy other equipment during deep cleans or something. If maybe you’re doing filter changes or stuff like that, there might be some concern in there for what sort of shoes you’re wearing.

Graham: The same thing can actually go for things like long sleeves and stuff like that, too, something to look into on the safety side.

Ashkahn: In terms of the customer service side, that one is the most up to your own personal taste, I think.

Graham: You mean the side where it’s you don’t want to offend customers, you want to set a dress code so that you have some kind of consistency set up?

Ashkahn: Yeah, there’s some pragmatics to it, right? Hey, if everyone’s wearing a t-shirt with your logo on it, then a customer knows who works there, and they know who to go up to and ask questions to. We don’t do that. Our people who work in our shop wear whatever they want, but for the most part it’s pretty easy to tell who works there and who doesn’t.

Graham: Yeah, sometimes the people standing behind the desk are the staff. That’s our policy. No, it has a lot to do with your business philosophy and your business personality, your brand overall, whether or not you want this kind of polished, uniformed look to people. In our case, again, where we’re going for this children room chic design, and our policies tend to be as lackadaisical as we can manage them to be. We really like people making Float On their own.

For us, again, as long as people are showing up, and they don’t smell terrible and their clothes aren’t totally ripped or they look like they came out of a wolverine fight or something like that, then for us it’s good. We actually prefer people to dress more like how they want to dress, because we feel like they’ll be more comfortable on the job, and it creates that more friendly, casual environment that we like.

On the flip side, of course, yeah, again, you have the uniformity and professionalism in some areas, and for your business that might be what you want. All of that is very personal, I guess. There’s no right or wrong decision for that, necessarily.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: Or wrong.

The last one, which I actually do have some tactical tips or advice on would be what’s useful dress for actually cleaning up or working the float center. Right?

Ashkahn: Yeah, and that comes … Mostly, people figure this out pretty fast who work for you. Someone makes a mistake once wearing shoes they like into the float center and then realizes they’re never doing that again. It’s the color of it a lot. You slowly fade out wearing any black clothes as you go in to work your shift. We have a lot of employees that like to wear little aprons.

Graham: Yeah, it’s interesting even despite not having a dress code, some things have become really popular. Aprons, for instance, have become really popular among our staff. It’s almost unanimous now, I think, that people wear those when they’re on shift, which is really cool. They have little pockets that you can store things like external thermometers in or extra earplugs or something, nice for carrying stuff around, little rags, and also stops your clothes from getting salty when you are running around and cleaning. If you need to go straight into customer service, you’re either wearing an apron, which looks a little better dirty, or you can even take it off really quick and be in full clean clothes, which is nice.

Ashkahn: Rubber shoes.

Graham: That’s exactly what I was gonna say.

Ashkahn: Actually, this one maybe does go into the HR stuff, too, as well, but you want shoes that have some slip resistance to them, ’cause you’re moving fast, and you’re cleaning salty floor and stuff like that. There’s, of course, a lot of slip resistance built into your construction, but still the people who are most likely to slip are the ones who are darting from room to room every single transition, trying to clean up salt water. There’s something to that, having good grip on your shoes.

Graham: Yup, good grip and washable. If you can throw your shoes under the sink, and you’re not worried about them, that is absolutely the type of shoe that you want for a float tank center.

Ashkahn: Yeah, for sure. Someone out there, some young enterprising soul is gonna make float shoes at some point, I think … shoes to wear at your float center that look cool but are entirely made of rubber.

Graham: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a good market. If you do them, let us know. We’ll be your first customers, absolutely. Our address is …

There’s some practical ones. Again, apron, good shoes. Same thing, if you’re having people wear long sleeve shirts, and that’s part of your dress code, reconsider that, too. It gets really hot inside the float tank rooms. Even dress shirts that have long sleeves, you’ll be sweating through those so fast if you’re running around during the transitions, especially in these high humidity float rooms. Something that you can wear, either shorts or short sleeve shirts or something that’s more breathable, also, tends to be also good.

Ashkahn: I’ll end this by saying that we have had a dress code before at Float On, full disclosure. There was a period of time where Jake, Marty, and I, we’d be working on Fridays in the shop together. We had a strict policy of formal Fridays. Every Friday in the shop, we’d actually wear button-up t-shirts and ties, and we quickly realized that we had to also have tie clips, or our ties would dip into the float tanks as we went around cleaning. That was a good little run that we had there. It was incredibly hot to wear that in our float center, but that was the dress code that we had at some point.

Graham: I’m actually kinda sad that our staff doesn’t do formal Fridays anymore.

Ashkahn: Yeah, we should make them. We should force …

Graham: Make it mandatory.

Ashkahn: That’s right, mandatory formal Fridays.

Graham: Formal Fridays every day.

Ashkahn: Except one day we’ll give them a break from it, you know?

Graham: So there you have it, our opinions on dress codes. I might even call those facts on dress codes, actually, less than opinions. As always, if you have your own questions that you want us to rant about, send them into floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

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