If you want to be top of the class on your next management training day, or would prefer to avoid it altogether, this book could be the key. Whether it is a management text, a personnel magazine or an interview with a successful young e-business entrepreneur, everywhere you look someone is proclaiming their faith in the ideology of empowerment. The fact is that we live in an age where human resource managers are desperate to prove their strategic worth to organisations. One of the lamest examples of this type of empowering policy is the dress-down concept. There is little question that the way people dress at work sets the tone of an organisation.
People act and feel differently according to how they are dressed.
The truth is that most employers simply do not trust their staff to act reasonably. There is plenty of evidence to show that staff appreciate being treated like rational human beings. If you want staff to act like adults, it makes sense to treat them that way. One of the problems is that employers are struggling to come to terms with the fundamental shift in the pecking order. As the labour market shrinks, law firms are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and then keep hold of good staff.