Dress codes are no way to fix what is broken

Late last year, Target Corp. started giving detailed guidance to store employees about how to act. The 10-4 rule, as the company calls it, directs them to smile, make eye contact and wave when a shopper comes within 10 feet. If they come within four, they should engage verbally by asking whether they need help or how their day is going, according to the Tribune News Service.

Starting this summer, the retailer will start enforcing a new mandate — this one about how employees should dress: blue-coloured denim or khakis with plain red shirts. No more of this pink or maroon business, and large logos and graphics are forbidden — unless worn under a company vest. Store leaders will have to trade in their shorts for pants. (The company is providing a free T-shirt and additional discounts to help employees meet the requirements.)

Dress codes and uniforms have long been used by companies to signal an identity — a tie conveys seriousness, a hoodie rejects hierarchy, a lab coat signals authority. But in this case, there is a very specific image that Target is trying to project to investors and customers with its wardrobe crackdown: of a company that’s reasserting control of a struggling business by exerting greater control over its employees. In March, Target reported its 13th consecutive quarter of sluggish or declining sales, a month after Chief Executive Officer Michael Fiddelke took the job.

Starbucks Corp., a fellow retailer also in turnaround mode, has made parallel moves. Last year, its baristas were instructed to write personalised messages on patrons’ cups (“you’re amazing,” “seize the day” or a simple smiley face). Just months later, store workers were directed to wear only a solid black shirt under their green aprons.

All the new rules and decrees are in line with the current zeitgeist in corporate America: bosses are in their command-and-control era. Amid AI anxiety and mass layoffs, the management class is reclaiming its authority by quashing dissent, increasing surveillance and cutting benefits like parental leave and paid time off. They’re policing how workers express their personal views even outside the office, demanding they return to their desks five days a week and, in this latest power grab, issuing new directives about what they should wear. The approach is a deliberate management style. But it is not a strategy for fixing real business problems. It can give the impression of order and discipline without actually delivering on either.

Granted, there’s a rationale behind spiffing up a workforce. Studies have shown that formalising how employees dress can signal professionalism, which encourages more customer engagement. (Target has said it is trying to “create a more consistent” experience, while Starbucks wants to a achieve “a sense of familiarity.”) But the research also suggests the effect cuts both ways: because uniformed workers appear as a homogenous group, shoppers are more likely to blame the company — not the individual — for bad service.

In practice, tightening a dress code often ends up being more about optics than impact. Joya Misra, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, calls it one of “these little adjustments around the margins” that doesn’t address the actual challenges facing the workforce. For example, at Target, if customers can’t find workers to ask for help, that’s more likely to do with poor staffing than employees not wearing the right shade of red.

But now Target executives have given store managers the additional task of policing employees’ wardrobes instead of focusing on initiatives that might actually improve the store — say, keeping shelves stocked or checkout lines short. “The onus of meeting this burden falls on the lowest in the organisational hierarchy,” says Kyla Walters, a professor at California’s Sonoma State University and Misra’s co-author on Walking Mannequins, which examines how retailers control employees’ appearance.