In the USA in particular, dressing for work is a political and social minefield. Increasingly this is becoming true in the UK too. It’s important to look right but also to feel right, and this is a constant debate between HR departments and others.

In many countries there are no legal restrictions on clothing, but this is not universally true. Some countries have religious and cultural clothing restrictions which are enforceable in public. In terms of employment, no dress code can be discriminatory – this means that an enforceable dress code, as opposed to guidelines, must be acceptable to all ages, genders, religions etc.

It’s notable that professional business attire has become more popular with both employers and customers – while a casual dress culture seemed to be developing right up to the millennium, it’s become quite common for a more restrictive dress code to be enacted by employers since then.

Many educational organisations are reinstating guidance on dress codes for students and alumni – once again the lead is being taken by the US but many British universities now have a support for those attending interviews that includes a clothing consultation.

It’s a safe bet that neutral colours, natural fabrics and formal fashion will continue to be the requirements for interview clothing in the decade ahead, but for men, polo-shirts have slipped under the radar and become the ideal garment for an ‘informal interview’ eg a breakfast meeting or a group interview, while for women, a long sleeved T-shirt, skirt and boots are considered to be the same dress for success uniform for the informal interview.

In a provocative article in the Financial Times, hospital doctor Sophie Harrison points out how the role of uniforms matters in the healthcare workplace. A 2007 ruling banned the traditional white coat for doctors and brought in a policy of bare arms from the elbow down, in an attempt to increase hygiene procedures. This, in turn, was designed to fight hospital transmitted infections like MRSA or c difficile.

The result though, has been to confuse patients and visitors, who struggle to identify clinicians and other hospital staff, and to create a culture of fear which has led to excessive measures in some bacteria-conscious hospital visitors.

If workplace hygiene is essential, then taking a look at premises, as well as work clothing, can be the best route. If staff have to get changed in toilets (as Harrison claims) it’s much more likely that they will come into contact with dangerous bacteria – and bacteria and viruses are much more easily spread by hand to hand contact than they are on clothing, so it’s what staff touch, more than what they wear, that matters.

And if you have an environment like a clinic, hospital or other health centre, the effect of removing distinctive uniforms may be to add to the psychological stress of the non-hospital employee – Harrison says that it’s now difficult to distinguish junior doctors, ward pharmacists and medical students by clothing alone and that can cause anger and distress in people who don’t understand why the ‘doctor’ in front of them is unable to help them.

Clearly defined uniforms are important and there’s no need to sacrifice clarity for hygiene – colour coding of tabards and different styles of short sleeved shirt and polo shirt can really help visitors to understand the distinctions in employee status and responsibility.

According to Regus, who provide office services, more than half the working population whose jobs are desk-based will be at work, or will check their emails and do home-based work over the Christmas break.

Around a third claimed that this was going to cause ‘serious upset’ for family, friends or partners, or had done so in the past. For small businesses the stress of the festive season is likely to be even greater.

• 5% of business owners planned to work on Christmas Day and 10% will be working on New Year’s Day too.
• Nearly 40% of business owners will be working at some point over the festive period, despite the fact that their business is officially closed.

It’s a paradox, because 40% of the office workers travelling to work think they will achieve ‘very little’ between Christmas and New Year.

Employers should learn from this survey to explore how the same technology that allows for work flexibility can damage holidays and family life. Tiredness and family rows are unlikely to contribute to business success and trying to create proper home working systems so people can work from home in the night-wear if they want to, or, as a minimum, ensuring that staff working unusual hours are able to dress in casual clothing, take regular breaks and benefit in some way from their efforts. Some firms offer an in-office ten minute head and shoulder massage to any staff working the Christmas period and others provide a New You buffet of healthy foods so that workers can snack on fruit, nuts and salads as they work. It all contributes to a sense of worth and stops stressed, overfed and under-exercised individuals making workplace mistakes through tiredness, burn-out or simple resentment.

When schools or nurseries shut through bad weather, parents need to have a Plan B, especially if they have to combine working with childcare.  It’s a good idea to make sure you have the resources to entertain stuck at home children whilst continuing to be work, as best you can, from home. But finding the balance between amusing the kids and being an effective worker can be difficult. Here are 3 ideas to make the process easier.

Swiss Family Whoever

When the weather is bad outside, getting the kids to play survival inside is fun and even educational. Set up a tent in the living room (it can just be blankets stretched over chairs for the littlest ones, whilst older kids can use their ingenuity to build a camp from bedding and furniture) and turn off the lights. Hand out torches, and get them to conduct ‘raids’ into various rooms to get the equipment needed (food, books, phones, games consoles etc) whilst remaining silent. Back at camp they can work out how to ration the food etc for themselves. Smart kids will even set up their own missions and treasure hunts.

Winter Wonderland

Simple science can be good fun in bad weather if you take a few precautions. Ensure your children are well wrapped up in layers of outdoor clothing and that you have warm, dry garments to hand indoors. Then let them try a few experiments: examining snowflakes under a powerful magnifying glass, for example, or raindrop races down a window. Perhaps give them some equipment to try and make a wind gauge or if it’s very muddy outside, send them out to discover and identify bird and animal tracks. Even in a city you can get the kids to look at the growth of moss and lichens between paving slabs and on city trees and try to work out how the plant got there and what it survives on. Back home, write up a science journal and drink hot chocolate to reward the budding scientist.

Artistic Endeavour

Teens can be encouraged to make snowmen or snow angels if the weather is really bad, or even to paint pictures in the snow using food colouring. If it’s really atrocious outside, get them to customise their own old clothing, or yours, using fabric paint, scissors and ingenuity – then hold a fashion show!

For many of us there are jobs that have to be done outside in winter, whether it’s our full-time work in the outdoor weather or just a small part of our working day like taking the bins out to be emptied or walking to or from our car. It’s important to dress appropriately for the weather so that we are able to be healthy and safe and to face whatever the day throws at us.
The current long-range weather forecasts suggest an early winter, with snow in the UK predicted from November to January and with December having lower than average temperatures. Exactaweather.com, a non-profit-making organisation which has accurately predicted the last two harsh winters, says 2011/12 could be record-breakingly cold.
Hypothermia begins at much higher temperatures than most of us realise and is more common than many British workers recognise. While in the USA around 700 people die each year of hypothermia as a result of work conditions, figures for the UK are not broken down in this way – but a staggering 30,000 deaths a year are considered to result from exposure to cold. Hypothermia is a potential killer and often goes unrecognised in the early stages because the symptoms are fatigue, nausea, confusion, and sweating.

• Wearing gloves and a hat are important for outdoor work. Gloves insulate the hands but need to be flexible enough to allow a worker to manipulate tools or controls. A hat needs to provide good heat conservation and may also help with visibility – a peaked cap can keep rain and snow from the eyes, but some hats also impede hearing and it’s important to ensure that one form of safety is not sacrificed to another.
• For outdoor work it’s better to wear lightweight clothing in layers that can be adjusted to the prevailing weather conditions because it is as important to remove layers to avoid getting over-warm as perspiring can lead to chills that in turn lead to hypothermia as the cold moisture near the skin triggers a physical reaction – damp clothing is up to twenty times less heat retentive than dry clothing, so layers are vital to ensuring safe outdoor working.
• For those working near machinery, scarves are a particular hazard, as are the dangling drawstrings of hoodies – it’s vital to ensure that clothing that keeps us warm is also safe in the work environment and anything that can catch or entangle in moving parts is dangerous.
• Winter food is vital to productive working – complex carbohydrates and simple warmth are important to stop people, even those working at desks, developing the lethargy that results from becoming cold and using up calories to keep the body warm. Hot drinks can really make a difference to performance too.

There seems to be an increasing concern about the role of clothing in small businesses, particularly those that offer some kind of professional service. As companies downsize and out-source, it’s becoming important that the appearance of all those involved in a company reflect the company ethos, including the professional nature and status of the organisation. The loss of intervening layers of middle management often means that those at the front of the business, such as receptionists, are the figureheads for the business in general and so their appearance becomes vital.

However, it can be difficult for small firms to discuss, let alone impose, a dress code on members of staff who have got used to dressing casually or provocatively. One sensitive way of dealing with this issue is to hold a firm-wide seminar or lunch meeting on the subject of Appropriate Work Clothing using one of the many online guides to dressing for success. Divide the company on gender lines for this event and offer some light-hearted fun as well as serious exploration of what counts as professionally appropriate clothing.

You can, for example, invest in some clothing props: these could be anything from fridge magnets of famous figures with a range of magnetic outfits through to paper cut-out dressing up dolls, right up to shop window dummies and cheap clothing in the form of second-hand or discount clothing. These can be used during the session to create the most and least appropriate outfits for various situations: work, barbecue, going to the theatre etc – this stops it feeling like a lecture and gives people an idea of how to put an outfit together: not a skill that everybody possesses!  If you really want to invest in your staff, you can even get an image consultant to come in and suggest the best colours for each member of the team to wear.

Once the seminar has taken place, you can have one-to-one conversations with any team member who is sloppy or overly sexy in their dress habits, confident that you can hold a conversation on professional grounds without it being seen as a judgement on personal style.

Many people are finding the new focus on Halloween in the UK quite a struggle. Many of us do not naturally dress up and parade around, and we find the whole focus on costumes and sweeties (or candy, as the Americans would say) a bit like the worst kind of childhood party.

This isn’t the way to think about the day – by changing your mindset you can see it as a chance to boost skills, build team spirit and enjoy a completely different way of being involved in the workplace.

• Begin by making sure your costume is appropriate and allows you to work in comfort. Anything too provocative or topical may offend or upset others, so stick to a traditional costume or focus on something low-key like dressing as a cowboy, chef or vampire might help you get into the spirit. If you really can’t bear to dress up, then why not offer to photograph everybody else? That allows you to have a role and to take part in the fun without having to wear something silly.
• Take part in making plans – organise a committee of people who want to celebrate Halloween and ensure that all departments or teams are involved so that no one group.
• Plan the whole day – it’s too easy to spend ten minutes having fun and then the rest of the day feeling like a complete fool because nothing’s going on. Organise a little something for every hour of the work day, whether it’s putting photos of people in costume on the intranet and getting others to vote on who’s most scary, or a limerick competition with first lines based on famous horror stories, or a quick tour of the offices with some Halloween sweets for everybody.
• Charity fundraising can be a part of your day: either ‘fine’ people who haven’t dressed up, or charge those who have a small fee to have their photographs taken with some props you’ve purchased for the day, like a plastic skull and some black candles. Organise for somebody to tell fortunes (bad ones, of course!) and set a small charge for this with the money going to charity.

While a lot of employers are now allowing staff to dress up for Halloween as part of charitable activity, some have managed to turn the fun and fundraising into a workplace team booster too. As an example, one large company in Brighton limits the amount people can spend to create their costumes (and receipts must be produced) and every department competes to win a £500 donation to the charity of the department’s choice. A call centre in the north of England has a different approach: teams are each given a theme and have to come up with the imaginative and entirely recycled costumes on that theme.

If you would like to create Halloween costumes at home, whether for family or work fun, here are a few ideas:

Tourist
Find an old Hawaiian shirt or loud T-shirt and team it with some baggy long shorts, old sandals and thick socks. Wear silly sunglasses and carry a camera, map and translation book. Get people to take your photo in front of random things like pillar boxes and speak slowly and loudly.

Timekeeper
This costume literally costs pennies. Buy white foundation and a black eyeliner. Pull back your hair, paint your face white and draw Roman numerals like a clock face – then draw the hands originating from your nose (you may need help with the numerals, it’s difficult to draw them backwards in a mirror). Wear a black T-shirt and leggings.

Sweet Treat
Many offices have large clear rubbish bags. Grab one and cut arm and leg holes, keeping them on the small side. Then either buy balloons or a bag of small bright plastic balls (pound shops usually have these) and blow up the balloons until they are barely inflated. Write an M on each one to look like M&Ms. If you prefer a British sweet, small boxes can be painted white with a middle layer of black, black and pink or black and orange to look like Liquorice Allsorts. Put the sweets in the bag and sellotape it to your shoulders. Be careful when sitting down!

Siamese Twins
If you have a friend or colleague you can really bear to spend Halloween with, this costume always earns giggles. Buy two large or extra-large men’s T-shirts and cut the right side and sleeve away from one and the left sleeve from the other and then sow together so you have one shirt with two armholes and two necks. Wriggle in and prepare for fun!

The Accrington Stanley team have demonstrated their support for the East Lancashire Hospice by wearing specially printed T-shirts for their team warm up each Saturday.

The T-shirts are designed to help raise awareness about the services the hospice offers as well as raising money for it. Supporters are encouraged to contribute to the running costs of the Hospice during a collection held before the match. The season-long partnership will have events most weeks to raise funds for the hospice.

Over in Coventry, shoppers were surprised by office workers dressed as animals. The ‘beasts’ who work in Homeless Internationals office usually wear office attire but for one day they put on animal costumes and travelled the city centre to raise funds for the charity’s slum dweller programmes in Africa and Asia. Two of the staff even chose to wear their costumes on their cycle to work, rather than donning their usual casual clothing.

November is a great time to organise a clothing based charity event at work, as it coincides with Halloween. Many employers are now offering the chance to wear fancy dress for the day as a way of building team spirit in the office or factory along with giving something back to the local community or a nominated charity.

Apparently, British parents are going to spend nearly £7 billion on looking after and entertaining their children this summer. This breaks down to around £110 per child, per week, for the six week summer break.

A third of parents who responded to a survey on this subject said the costs were impossible to afford and one in ten relied on family members to provide free child care.  Nearly two-thirds of parents are expecting to use discounts and vouchers alongside free activities like museums just to keep the kids busy.

Amusing children

Children are rarely amusing, and difficult to amuse, when the novelty of a long holiday has worn off. There can be few things more annoying than a bored child so preparing some plan B activities can be essential to family harmony:

Old clothes

Using adult clothing as dress up is something that children like to pretend they have grown out of around the age of five or six. But a twist on this theme can keep them happy for hours. List famous characters: Napoleon, Hermione Granger, Dr Who, Boudicca, Eminem, Lady GaGa in sealed envelopes and put old clothes in a huge hamper. Let each child pick an envelope and then, when they all know who they are ‘playing’ go through the hamper and make costumes. They have to stay in character for a preset time, speaking and acting like the name they picked and the winner gets to decide what to have for dinner.

Old paint

If you can bear it, give the children the inside of the garage, leftover paint and brushes. Designing and painting a mural can keep children amused for days, especially if the weather is bad. Make sure they wear suitable protective clothes though.

Work and Family

Employers can help by:

•    Researching the options available locally: a notice-board near the kettle can help parents identify opportunities to amuse their children and earn a little sanity for themselves.
•    Offering networking opportunities: allowing parents to share childcare ideas and even bulk-buy solutions such as a coach trip with qualified childcare workers as group leaders.
•    Providing a work-based solution such as a short-term crèche in the workplace for one week of the summer holidays – usually the first – so parents can feel sure they have childcare cover in the first few days and then have time to sort out other options: this can be really valuable for parents who are dealing with the first summer holiday.
•    Ensuring they have a plan to learn from each year’s experiences with holidays: for small businesses in particular it can be the case that all employees have children of a similar age and so there are new things to learn every year. If summer holidays don’t go well this year, make sure the same mistakes are never made again. Kids never forget a bad summer but businesses may not survive one!