Staff Presentation
The way that staff appear to customers and potential
customers can have a significant bearing on how a retail store is perceived.
Appropriate Appearance of Staff
Personal hygiene and cleanliness of staff is important for all retailers and even more so for stores selling food products or drugs. Staff in stores that sell hardware products will often wear overalls. Apart from protecting their own clothes, overalls can give the staff, and therefore the store, a professional appearance and reinforce the practical nature of their products.
Staff in a fashion store may be encouraged to wear fashionable clothes themselves. Some stores will provide clothes to staff from their own stock as a way of promoting specific items. Stores that
sell information technology equipment, modern gadgets or recorded music may be encouraged to dress very casually so that their predominantly young market will not feel intimidated or alienated by formal dress.
Retailers that sell high value goods, or goods that are perceived as high value, may ask their staff to dress formally. Examples are high-class clothes stores and
jewellers. Although rare, some of these retailers insist that customers should also dress smartly.
Dress codes will mainly apply to larger retailers. With the exception of food and drug stores, it is very common for small retailers to have no dress code at all.
Trust
Many stores will ask their management staff to wear dress that is more formal than the rest of the staff, even in some cases where staff are being encouraged to dress fashionably or casually. This contrast may be preferred by stores that wish to make staff appear welcoming while giving the impression that the store is run professionally and can be trusted.
Attractive Appearance
Some retail stores will recruit staff who they perceive as being good looking. This is especially true of fashion outlets. This practice is rarely official company policy and is often a subconscious decision. Selection filtering that uses facial or bodily attributes may be considered unlawful in some jurisdictions where it could be considered as de facto discrimination on grounds of race, gender or even age .
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