Millennial Control The Dress Code In The Workplace

One of the largest generation is about to move into its prime spending years.

Millennials are said to be the future of the world. That is true, with the number of their population and purchasing power that they have as a generation is overwhelming compared to the previous Baby Boomer and X generation. Keep in mind, that a majority of the Baby Boomers are in their retirement years; while Gen X are going into the retirement years. This is all happening while the Millennials are going into their prime year of major buying decision making.

From a Goldman Sach data chart, there are over 92 million people born from the Millennial age, while the population of the Baby Boomers is just over 77 million while the Gen X population is 61 million.

The Millennials are the majority and are shaping the future on how it wants to be, just as the generation did before them. Millennials are forcing the economy to cater to them. They also are forcing companies to change the way they do business for years to come.

Millennials are the first generation born into the digital age; with a overload of information in the palm of their hand. They have the ability to share their product experience to friend and family through different social media platform. Not only that, they have the ability to change not only the product and service that they use, but also their career and their job. The workplace have to catered to them since they are the majority of the population. On that note, Millennials constantly share information with everyone around them whether its good or bad. This creates a higher standard of satisfaction so that company and brand have to create great products and services, and on top of that , great jobs!

One of the recent policy changes affecting the workplace everywhere in America, is the dress code. Many companies have changed their dress code from formal business wear to casual business wear.

It's about breaking the norm, and more so, freedom of flexibility in self expressions. Millennials like being different and unique, the option of choosing a sense of style that fit their own taste. They will argue that business formal is limited to only suits, dress pants, dress shoes, polo, sport jackets, long sleeve dress shirts and a tie. Its conservative with a perceived image and notion that many young person want to break away from. Yes, they still want to be successful but to be viewed as successful in their own ways rather than to a style that have been used by the previous generation and the one before that.

One of the major companies, Men Wearhouse, more known for their men’s suit wear, just recently changed their dress code policy from business formal to business casual. One of the main reasons why they did this is to attract the younger Millennials into the store more. According to a 2015 study done by the U.S. Census, “Millennials, or America’s youth born between 1982 and 2000, now represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers.” This just shows how important it is for companies to think ahead how to market to the next generation that will take over the marketplace in terms of purchasing power and population size. This is a bold move from Men’s Wearhouse, since their company image has been cemented as a men suit wear since the early 1970s. George Zimmer, original founder or the company, was terminated from the company by his own hand-picked board members. The sudden change in dress code within this company is most likely due to Men’s Wearhouse reorganizing itself as a holding company, and was replacing itself by the publicly held corporation, Tailored Brands Inc. Tailored Brands Inc., owns multiple brands, some of which are named Jos. A Bank, Joseph Abboud, Moores, Twin Hill, and many more. It will takes a lot of branding to move themselves to attract younger generation known as the Millennials. The strong move of changing the dress code to a more unique Millennial is headed for the right direction.In turn, it will attract younger workers, which attracts younger shoppers.This push causes other companies to try competing for trendier styles and better service in the store. The millennials literally own the business casual look and other companies should strive to raise their bar so they do not lose business.

Retailers are having a hard time with the mass amount of online shopping and many of them are closing stores and laying off thousands of workers. But we will talk about this more later for next week post for our "Millennial Series". Until then, just know that the future belongs to the millennial!