NEWBURYPORT — City Hall employees will need to start dressing up more for work.
Mayor Donna Holaday informed employees that she will be enacting a dress code for all employees in the building, starting the day after Labor Day. Employees will no longer be able to wear jeans, she said.
"Jeans have become the norm," Holaday said this week.
Men will have to wear a shirt and tie, and women will need to wear skirts, pants of a non-jeans material and acceptable top or jacket, under the new dress regulations.
On Fridays, attire can be less formal, but employees will still not be allowed to wear jeans, Holaday added.
When following a dress code, employees are more professional and should dress for working with the public and not look "disheveled," Holaday said. How the public perceives them and interacts with them depends on an employee's appearance, she said.
"You're more professional; you have to dress for work," the mayor added. "You shouldn't dress for how you hang out at home."
Molly Ettenborough, the city's recycling and energy coordinator, said she thinks the dress code is a good thing.
"It's a public office, and people need to look nice," she said.
However, the responsibilities of some offices, such as hers or the building inspector, can present wardrobe challenges, she added. For example, one rainy day last week she had to go to the recycling yard in North Andover.
"Those days, I can't wear nice stuff," she said.
So, she keeps a pair of grubby clothes in her office to change into if she has to head out to such a venue, Ettenborough said.
Planning director Andrew Port has worn a shirt and tie each day since starting his position in July.
"It doesn't affect me very much," he said. "I like the idea of professionalism."
A 2007 Gallup poll shows the growing popularity of business casual attire in the workplace. In the United States, 43 percent of non-self-employed workers commonly wear casual business attire, followed by casual street wear, 28 percent.
Since 2002, there has been a significant increase in the percentage of workers saying they wear business casual attire to work most days, from 32 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll's findings.
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