That workplaces are generally better off with uniforms

In this debate, it goes without saying that we're discussing people. Real people, with unique identities. People come from a range of backgrounds - different cultures, different religions, different values. To say otherwise is simple discrimination. The forced equality mantra that everyone is the same and will respond to a uniform in the same way, is incorrect from its very premise - humans are dissimilar.

In practice, that means that when a young airline stewardess feels her uniform skirt is showing too much of her legs, that's going to make her unhappy in the workplace. She's going to become self-conscious, and start noticing whenever anyone briefly glances in her general direction. It means that the truck driver is under constant pressure at every stop to wash his few sets of uniforms, while also getting a reasonable rest stop so as not to be a danger on the roads, and getting going again on time to maintain his productivity. He's going to become stressed and anxious. It means the ferris wheel operator gets mocked at his job for looking like a clown, even by his mates, and he begins to resent his ferris wheel operator job more and more by the day. These are but a few examples of what really happens when uniforms are introduced.

Pro's argument, surprisingly, completely fails to consider the impact on those actually most affected by uniforms: the employees themselves. In service terms, such staff contribute to an overall lowering of the quality of work, which directly in turn affects the company's bottom line. Not only that, but it is also riskier. For example, a demotivated employee is unlikely to go through all the workplace safety procedures properly, and that puts both them, their clients, and the business at risk. They are also likely to be less loyal to the company themselves, and may even drive potential customers away from the business.

This is true even outside of psychology. For example, a nurse may know that her uniform doesn't fit her particular body shape, putting herself and patients at risk of infections. Even though the nurse may be exceptional at her job, she is unlikely to be hired over a nurse who does fit the uniform and the "image" that the hospital wants to present. That means lower quality of care for patients. A poorly designed uniform may limit employee movement or just be plain annoying, with all the disadvantages that follow from that.

Inherently, uniforms are expensive. Unifirst, one of the largest uniform suppliers in the world, charges almost $600 in the latest online catalogue for two sets of shirts, pants and coveralls, the basic apparel of most secondary industry. Add to that other protective gear like hard hats, and it becomes apparent that uniforms are not cheap.

This leaves most workplaces with uniforms with effectively two options:

Since a company's ongoing costs for uniforms are directly proportional to staff turnover (in addition to costs for things such as cleaning, repairs etc) the fact that uniforms aren't fun for employees is going to hurt profits.

The choice of uniforms is not a zero-sum game: in fact, while choosing to have uniforms has all these drawbacks, choosing to not have uniforms has clear benefits. People who are able to express their own identities and "what makes them unique" in the workplace. People will never choose an Apple laptop because they were busy admiring the uniforms of the employees there. They probably don't even remember them the moment they walk out of the store. But they might choose an Apple laptop because of an employee's friendly personality. They might want to buy from somebody of the same ethnicity or religion because they're more comfortable with that. Or maybe they just don't like it when the salesman complains the entire time about his silly uniform.

When workers look in the closet in the mornings and decide what to wear, wearing the same thing day in, day out, is just plain boring. That's why human beings tend not to wear the same thing every single day. It feels creepy and boring, too. But personal expression is how people sell. By showing some personality, employees are motivated and enthused about what they're doing. They enjoy themselves and that's infectious - improving business all around.

There are actually very few environments where this should be necessary even within "retail" - if a girl's standing behind a counter and has a name tag on, you can probably make a safe bet that she's a sales clerk, even if she's wearing something totally crazy like a wetsuit or something. People know that. Similarly, personal anecdote: I got my bicycle repaired the other day. No uniforms in the bike shop. Just cycled up to the workshop, found some dudes with moustaches, lycra pants, and spanners - and indeed, those were the right people. It's not hard. On the other hand, the guys who stock the shelves at your local furniture shop likely have better things to do than respond to random inane customer queries.

Even if there are some borderline cases where it might be useful to be able to quickly identify staff, there are other ways to do so. In fact, not having uniforms can force teams to actually get to know one another and do team-building like high-performance teams typically do! If this is not possible, other solutions like name tags are practical, affordable, and unintrusive.

First, nobody wants to be a billboard. Such uniforms therefore tend almost never to be worn outside of work, and then only as spare clothes for dirty work like gardening. This further alienates employees, as having people stare at you during your lunch break is never comfortable.

Second, absolutely nobody buys stuff because a t-shirt told them to. I'm sure many people have dozens of random shirts they've won in raffles or something, that in no way indicate actual purchasing behavior. In similar ways, wearing, seeing, or otherwise keeping uniforms around the house won't actually fool anyone into parting with their money.

Looking the same as everyone else is hardly professional, but rather inauthentic. Motivated employees can be trusted to find their own unique ways to appear professional without the need for rigid systems like uniforms. Besides, let's be realistic, nobody thinks rubbish collectors are super professional just because they have uniforms on. There's no reason why it isn't the same for office environments, either.

Friends don't wear exactly the same clothes. Families don't wear exactly the same clothes. Real tribes don't wear exactly the same clothes. There's a reason for all this. A tribal mentality is fixed around shared norms, which requires buy-in. People need to want to wear the uniform before it can help reinforce that tribal mentality. If people don't want the uniform from the beginning, they're not going to think "oh cool, it's awesome to be part of a team where nobody's unique and we all wear the same stuff". We feel that there are other norms that a tribal mentality could be much better built around instead - like team-building, or even little cultural things like going out after work on Fridays.

The resolution is negated.

I want to begin by investigating pro's data, because it strikes me as a little strange.

His second link is an advertorial for a uniform company. That's an inherent conflict of interest. Looking at the actual facts of the article, basically none have a citation. Only two pieces of research are mentioned. The first is an online self-reported survey conducted by Ipsos in 2010, which among other things, also concluded that 56% of workers think it's appropriate to wear speedos to work. The methodology for the question of workplace productivity of uniforms, which was not in any way actually measured, was to ask a biased question to a self-selected internet sample, then artificially bump the percentage up even higher by "weighting" it according to regional population. In places like North America and Europe, a majority said that people in casual clothes are more productive.

The other piece of research it cites - nominally by Ashwini Poojary - was actually sponsored by Unifirst, making it biased (Unifirst, incidentally, also regularly funds other "studies" using self-reported internet data). It found "there is a positive correlation in companies whose uniform wearers are
regularly exposed to the public and the belief that uniform programs are
an effective marketing tool" - in other words, companies that have uniforms already, said that uniforms are great. This is hardly surprising, as the study itself points out.

The Houston Chronicle piece was an opinion piece, and actually cites no research at all. 

Instead, I think we should consider evidence from McPherson, because it is peer-reviewed and scholarly. His extensive survey showed: "41% felt casual dress improved worker productivity while only 4% perceived a negative impact... 51% said they did their best work when dressed casually". He also noted that "dressing casually can lead to better attitudes about work, greater spontaneity, and improved relations among employees" and that "the more comfortable employees are, the more productive they will be".

His is not an isolated study. Biecher famously penned in her landmark study that "We learned that you don’t have to wear a uniform to get the job done. It is not what you look like—it is what you can do". The National Casual Businesswear survey found the same thing - 60% said it improved productivity. Another famous study with a very large sample of accountants found more or less the same percentage. 

While corporate sponsored research will inevitably show signs of bias towards whatever that company manufactures (in this case, uniforms), independant research has shown the same result over and over: in the majority of cases, casual attire - not uniforms - is the greater boon for businesses.

My opponent thinks that uniform issues in the workplace are uncommon. I would argue that this is actually far from the case. Indeed, despite the fact that people no doubt select workplaces based on what kind of stuff they want to wear, uniform related issues are surprisingly normal. Each of the examples I presented in the previous round was based on a real-life case. Let's not forget that these issues have been experienced by operators as diverse as  Virgin rail, Abercrombie and Fitch, Heathrow Express, National Express, Spring Airlines, Allen and Overy, and the Olympic Games, and that's just British examples of major uniform scandals experienced in the space of just a few years. Failblog has an entire section dedicated to it.

But put aside the scandals. This is something that affects people in real-life, day to day, on a personal level. To give just one small example, Robin Cassidy recently opined in the Huffington Post: "I am happier to do more for my employer because I am comfortable at work." It's clear this cannot be dismissed as a fringe issue. Entire companies have been caught out, and even in those where workers are nominally "happy" with their uniforms, thousands are also driven away every year because of them.

If a uniform is not significant enough to negatively affect productivity then pro must concede it is also not significant enough to positively affect productivity. If there is any effect at all, it is negative.

Damaging a uniform is worse than damaging personal clothes, not least because while personal clothing is relatively expendable, uniforms are really expensive. If anything being more careful around the workplace so as to not damage valued clothing is a good thing for safety etc. I've never seen competitive one-upsmanship (seriously, how many times have you seen people try to have the more formal casual Friday than their colleagues?) but even if it did happen, it wouldn't be a bad thing and projects the "professional" image that pro thinks everyone should assert. If anything, it is pro's experience that is unusual.

Even if in the UK uniforms are subsidised, somebody's still paying for the uniform - be it taxpayers or workers or companies. And somebody is going to be losing money on that, which fuels the profits of the uniform companies (and be assured, they are making some pretty nice profits).

"Looking the part", as I pointed out previously, does not mean looking like a robot. Having an individual or unique style is itself a selling point. People are different. People prefer to buy from different people. If everyone in a company looks the same, you're really only appealing to a single customer. So this idea that everyone has the same expectation of a Harrod's employee is false. I'd be far more comfortable dealing with real people, over people who read from a script and are styled in all the same way. This in and of itself proves that I have a different view than my opponent, and thusly, that different expectations exist.

The freedom of expression is a value in and of itself, and it should be protected even in what we wear to work.

If customers need to locate a product in a supermarket, they could also go to the desk marked "Customer Service". Or ask somebody who is taking products out of a trolley and stocking them on shelves. Or ask the person behind the Delicatessen counter. Or just read the various signs that the supermarket has no doubt put up around the place. None of these things require uniforms and all work perfectly well.

I've dealt with my opponent's "evidence" already, but we should understand how brand attention works.

With the sole exception of people suffering from a condition known as "autism" (in whom this mechanism is damaged in some way), human brains have extremely complicated filters between the senses and memory. That's because we are constantly bombarded with information, and need to select only what is relevant to us. Things either register with our long term memory, or not. Therefore, smart marketers know that for effective branding, they first need to get attention. This is why things that are very unexpected, like flash mobs, are such effective tactics.

If it is the case, as I submit, that wearing random branded t-shirts does not indicate purchasing behaviour, then the only logical conclusion is that such attire does not pass the filters of the vast majority of the population. Therefore, it is inherently ineffective advertising, and does little to add to brand value.

The remainder of the points have been dealt with in rebuttals integrated above.

The resolution is negated.

In the previous round, my opponent once again failed to acknowledge the one group who is affected by workplace uniforms more than any other - workers. Above all, this debate is about what's best for workers, not for profits or customers.

My opponent and I could literally spend hours combing the internet for various opinion pieces on both sides of the issue. This in and of itself reflects the fact that people are not the same, and respond to workplace uniforms in different ways. That's unfortunate, because it proves that "one uniform suits all" doesn't apply in the workplace. Pro has failed to respond to any of my points here except to call them fringe, edge, marginal cases - despite my clear analysis that this kind of thing goes on all the time, in just about every industry that has uniforms.

I'd finally also like to briefly answer the contention about possibly ruining personal clothing. Unlike personal clothing, if you ruin a uniform, you can't work until the store orders you a new one. If pro is really concerned about safety, perhaps he shouldn't be ruining his clothing at all. With proper precautions it isn't even a risk.

The sources that pro provides are, again, more and more opinions. Which just so happen to come from two websites run by the same writing-for-hire agency (Demand Media), and a website written by two guys working for a retail marketing company (Rick Segel & Associates). Hardly independent!

Nelson and Bowen, however, deserve a little more attention and was actually somewhat meritorious. They had a sample size of about 200, in one industry (their response rate was only 36%, and I can't help but suspect self-selection bias probably crept in somewhere). They tested two hypotheses with statistical analysis. The first was that a better designed uniform was going to make people be happier. They found evidence to this effect (unsurprisingly). The second was that this was going to be moderated by the degree of customer contact - basically, pro's point under "appearance" below. Their evidence did NOT support this hypothesis!

Both presupposed that people had to wear those uniforms, and did not question (at all) whether the uniforms were necessary. Much less were they concerned with branding. I'd therefore like to take a moment to extend my "advertising" analysis from the previous round.

Even if Harrods were the epitome of all things retail, pro has yet to prove that the appearance of their uniforms, of all things, is the cornerstone of their success that he makes it out to be. There are many things that go into a purchase decision, and it may be that while uniforms are a disincentive (for reasons explained more fully in the previous rounds), there are other incentives to purchase from Harrods that seem more important to customers.

Even supposing the marginal inconvenience of spending a little longer finding a product were worth the many hundreds of millions that are wasted every year on uniforms, pro completely fails to engage with the analysis that ordinary shop-floor workers are still identifiable by what they are doing.

It's been many years since I've seen a police officer just casually strolling down the street just checking that there's no trouble in the area, looking for somebody to help. That's what the police did in the 1800s. Nowadays they cruise around in cop cars. To contact the police, you could call them, wave down a cop car, go to a police station - in this country you can even send them emails. Even if, for some reason, all these options were not available, and you really wanted to know whether that guy wearing a blue hat and swinging a baton down your street was a policeman, you could simply ask them. If you're really suspicious, you could ask for a badge. Not really sure why you'd ever need to do either of those things, but the option is there. Much like the shop-assistant there doesn't really seem to be much need for police uniforms for identification purposes.

Judges should bear in mind that this is effectively a new argument, introduced fairly late in the debate. It's all well and good to suggest that firemen dress themselves for the occasion, but what exactly that protection entails should nonetheless remain the right of the individual firefighter. Who are the fire service to say that one fireman cannot make a fashion statement as he battles some kind of blaze? Depending on the situation, it might not necessarily even put the fireman at any greater risk.

If there is a serious concern, it may be alright to legislate the necessity for certain types of gear to be worn with certain types of work - such as high-visibility strips for road workers - but to require a particular brand, color, and style, or even to require where those strips are worn? That's where it crosses the line, and ceases to be about safety. If an employee might be bald, there's no use in requiring all cooks to wear hair-nets.

Just because people are silly enough to buy some overpriced rubbish doesn't justify that rubbish being overpriced. The same is true no matter what the nature of the rubbish, or no matter what the reason for purchase. The fact is that this is a marginal cost businesses, employees and the general public could clearly do without. That applies not only to monetary cost, but also to time and other resources expended in the production and maintenance of all these uniforms.

The resolution is negated.

I agree that employees enter contracts requiring them to wear uniforms. It's been my contention since the very first round that this practice is unfair and discriminatory towards anyone who cannot wear such a uniform, for example for cultural, religious, or even gendered reasons. How much better actualized would our society be if people didn't have to avoid professions that they would otherwise be best suited to, simply because they don't like what they would have to wear? It's demeaning and dehumanizing to the individual workers who have to live with the fact they are but another cog in the machine, because the employer wants all their staff to have a particular look, often without any relevance to the job.

I'd like to reiterate that this was the most important issue in this debate. Pro needed to show that the biggest stakeholders, the workers of the world, are in general better off wearing uniforms to work. In fact, I believe I have demonstrated that uniforms cause more strife, stress and worry for employees than they save.

If employees don't bear the cost, somebody else does (pro seems to be arguing from a UK-centric position here). The point is that uniforms are unnecessary and expensive, which pro never really contests.

It should also be noted, as I have shown and can be deduced logically, that having more shirts etc simply increases the cost. Similarly, just because some labors are not performed by employees in some circumstances does not mean that they simply magically happen. It's just another cost multiplier. Pro can pay to remove many of the issues with uniforms, but then one has to ask oneself what massive benefit outweighs this massive expense. Even if there were a few small positives to uniforms, it would not outweigh the cost.

Pro's line is that uniforms are a risk worth taking, simply because it is being taken. That's fallacious. Numerous companies pollute the atmosphere, but that's not to say polluting the atmosphere is a good idea.

Pro had two main benefits for employers: branding and appearance. For neither of these points was he able to demonstrate that wearing a uniform actually translated into business success. Sure, he provided the odd quote from some business-person - who, funnily enough, all just so happened to be justifying their own investments into uniforms or were, on the basis of the article's origins, very likely paid by a uniform company. But when it came to demonstrating that uniforms provide a real benefit in terms of sales, profits, or just about anything else measurable, pro came up totally short. And that's for one simple reason - such evidence does not exist.

In the final round, pro hammers home the appearance point. I wish to simply remind judges that "people buy from people" also means they don't buy from robots coerced into dressing all the same way. I talked in previous rounds, for example, about how a person from one culture is more likely to buy from a store person whose clothing communicates that they are of that same culture - if everyone looks the same, this cannot happen.

Even if there are exceptions like police, pro had to show that workplaces are better off in general. He is using exceptions to prove rules.

Regardless, every time pro has attempted to show a profession where he believed uniforms were required for identification, I have provided numerous other ways that same person could be readily identified. People identify people every day without uniforms, so I really don't see the problem here.

This was a later argument, and it's really only been focused on one industry, which is likely a huge exception.

That being said, giving people choice and opening up competition has never been problematic for any apparel market. I'm certain a mildly impractical but super cool looking firefighting suit would sell like heck. This was a late point, and pro only connected it to cost in the last round, so I hope I'm justified in briefly adding that I have no problems with cost if that cost is borne as a matter of choice - it is when you require the purchase of certain garments, by either the employer, the employee or somebody else, that I have a problem.

Company uniforms are not worth the investment. The resolution is negated.

All I really want to add is that I wish my opponent the best of luck in judging, and hope to challenge him again in future!