06: Selection Process

Hiring to Fit Your Company Dress Code

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How Company Policy can affect your Recruitment

No HR policy drives more fear into an HR professional’s heart than creating a dress code policy.  As a new HR professional you may be asked to develop or revise your company’s dress code.

A company’s dress code can raise many employment concerns ranging from minor irritations to violations of Human Rights Laws.  As an HR professional, you have to be diligent when developing or revising a policy because it may affect your recruitment.

  • Are companies allowed to set rules on employee’s behaviour at work? Absolutely!
  • Can a company have a set dress code to match its brand, in style and look?  Absolutely!
  • Are there going to be problems when a company takes dress code to extremes?  Absolutely!

Read the HR online article on Abercrombie and Fitch’s look policy and how, after many years, the company is getting rid of its requirement to be “hot” in order to be hired.

Click here to view the article.

As you can see, an HR dress code policy is a fundamental component of any successful organization, but creating or revising one is not for the unprepared HR professional. Many aspects must be considered, so before completing your bosses request to create a new dress code policy, you must ask yourself the following discussion questions.

Discussion Questions:

  • What is the professional brand the company is seeking to achieve and maintain?
  • Are there legal implications to this brand or look we want to achieve?
  • Does this look or dress code infringe on any prohibited grounds under Human rights legislation directly?
  • Does this look or dress code infringe on any prohibited grounds under Human rights legislation in-directly?
  • Does it create systemic discrimination?
  • Will this dress code affect our ability to hire certain individuals from protected minority groups?
  • How will this new or revised dress code affect current employees?  Will we be able to retain them as employees?

 

 

 

The Candidate

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Sometimes, the interview process can be deadly dull for everyone involved. Heineken, the Dutch brewing company, is noted for its unique and creative media campaigns when it comes to advertising their beer related products. They’ve taken the extra step and have applied that creativity to their hiring campaigns and documented it in this video clip “The Candidate”.

Source: wwwyoumarkit. The above content constitutes a link to the source website.  Please click on the play icon to stream the video.

It’s fun; it’s inspiring; it’s heart-warming. But is it effective? How do you know?

All too often HR practitioners get lost in making sure the ‘right’ questions get asked and/ or the ‘correct’ tests are administered to ensure that the ‘right’ candidate gets hired based on standard Knowledge, Skills and Abilities requirements. Does the Heineken approach allow for an opportunity to get that elusive ‘fit’ requirement between the candidate and the company? Does this process make the decision to hire the right person easier at the end? Are there other benefits to this approach?

If nothing else, this clever recruitment strategy provides a great promotional opportunity for Heineken to elevate brand recognition and to ensure vast international interest for future recruitment strategies. It also challenges other employers to step up their game when it comes to interactive recruitment processes in order to ensure that the best candidate gets the job.

Let’s recognize that Heineken, as a vast global organization, has the money and resources to put this recruitment campaign into place. Most employers would not have access to do any of this kind of recruitment on such a huge scale. Having said that, all employers, with the guidance and support of an effective Human Resources team, want the same result – to recruit, select and hire the best person for the job.

Discussion Question:

  • How will you as the HR practitioner make sure that the best hiring fit is ensured no matter how big or small your organization may be?