Today, office workers around the country will be revelling in the giddy freedoms of Dress Down Friday. But for freelancers like myself, every day can be dress down — it's often one of the major sells of the lifestyle. The question is: does working in your pants or pyjamas help get the job done?
Evidence suggests the very act of getting suited and booted makes you feel more productive. According to Reed Employment, 37 per cent of us prefer to work in uniform while 85 per cent like a precise dress code.
So should home-workers impose one on themselves?
Far from it, says Karen Kennard, a marketing guru and mother of two, who runs her own flexible skills consultancy from home. Three months ago, Kennard set up The National Pyjama Club, a website where home-workers can upload picture proof of their jim-jams alongside motivational tips. "So many employers think that if you're working from home, you're not working at all," says Kennard, "but often we work a darn sight harder. I can be straight out of bed at 7am checking my emails and it's hard to switch off. I do get dressed but I don't feel the need to put on a suit."
Kennard's site gets lots of visitors, but few have uploaded photos. People are happy to work in their nighties, it seems, just not to be papped in them (unless they're Carrie Bradshaw). This matches research in Holland which found 44 per cent of senior managers regularly work from home in their pyjamas, but avoid video conferencing while doing so. No surprises there.
Pyjama Club members happy to pose for the cameras include a slipper-wearing accountant and an estate agent seductively swaddled in a white towelling robe. Writers are strangely absent, despite it being a profession prone to dressing down. Alexander Masters, former winner of the Guardian First Book Award, told a journalist, he rarely gets out of bed some days, seeing it as a good sign if he hasn't used his legs before 4pm.
However, just as there has been a backlash against Dress Down Friday in certain City firms, there are freelancers spreading the gospel of smart. "Fix up, look sharp," advises web designer Matt Brown. "Shower everyday (before 9am), and dress in clean clothes ... when you treat your appearance seriously, you're in a much better frame of mind to focus on your work."
It's advice you may need to follow yourself if, as Owen Powell wrote recently on this blog, home working is the future.
