Beth Kowitt: 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.

Starting this summer, the retailer will start enforcing a new mandate — this one about how employees should dress: blue-colored 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 personalized 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 formalizing 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 organizational 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.

For a sense of how arbitrary these mandates can appear, look at Starbucks. Niccol has said the company lost its mojo because it was run “like a manufacturing facility,” placing efficiency above all else. As he stakes the company’s comeback on reestablishing a relaxed coffeehouse vibe, it’s unclear how having employees dress like interchangeable cogs in the Starbucks machine helps break the perception of the company as a coffee factory. “It’s a little bit about how we are seeing the country,” Misra told me. “We’re in a moment where we’re getting the message that everyone has to look the same way.”

The more a company tries to script its workers, the more unhappy they are, Misra says. Yet this is not a moment when employers seem particularly focused on worker satisfaction. It marks a complete U-turn from the pre-pandemic days when a tight labor market compelled companies to project an employee friendly image. A low-stakes way to make people feel seen and heard was to loosen up how they could dress.

In 2018, Target began letting employees wear jeans on weekends as a reward for strong same-store sales — a perk it later expanded to every day when workers hit holiday goals. In 2023, the company broadened who could wear shorts during record heat waves as a nod to employee comfort and safety. When Starbucks started letting employees wear a range of shirt colors and a hat that reflected their personal style in 2016, it told baristas “to shine as individuals.” You’d be hard-pressed to find a company making this kind of bring-your-whole-self-to-work declaration today.

There are signs that both companies are starting to focus on implementing real changes that really do work. At Starbucks, after a year and a half as CEO, Brian Niccol’s plan to reignite the business may finally be taking hold. Last week, the company’s quarterly results exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, and the stock is up more than 25% this year. Starbucks says it will now pay baristas an additional $1,200 if they meet their store’s sales targets and has invested more than $500 million in additional staffing. Target is following suit, investing about $6 billion in initiatives that include improving staffing at stores by hiring additional employees and upping the number of hours they can work.

These are the kinds of substantive investments that actually move the needle — and they require employee buy-in to work. A good place to start might be restoring some of the autonomy companies have stripped away from frontline workers who had so little of it to begin with. An easy way to do that? Let them wear what they want.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune Magazine.

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