The View | Dressing down: it’s time companies abandoned their stuffy dress codes

Well, well, well it seems that starchy old Goldman Sachs is planning to edge itself into the glorious world of casual dress.

A new edict from Elisha Wiesel, the bank’s chief information officer, decrees that technology and engineering staff can now adopt a ‘casual dress code’, and they can do so all the time, but need to think about getting back into their suits and black dresses for client meetings.

The liberation from stiff business attire will only be granted to around a quarter of Goldman’s staff. The move has apparently been prompted to counter competition from the big tech companies who can attract some of the brightest and the best by offering a more casual work environment and a more relaxed management style.

The rest of the workforce is still expected to turn up for work in attire that differs little from that worn by the fine folk who work as undertakers.

So this means that Goldman’s quite extensive staff roster here in Hong Kong will continue to be encased in clothing that is hardly appropriate for a semi-tropical environment. They will carry on being shrouded in business attire that probably works okay in New York for most of the year, but causes male employees to sweat and female employees to glow as they plough their way through the city’s humid maze.

Goldman staff are hardly alone in the local banking sector, where sticking to formal attire reaches right down to bank tellers and more or less everyone else working in Hong Kong’s financial industry.