Goldman Sachs pinned a poll to its Twitter account asking what its employees should wear to work now that the investment bank has relaxed its dress code.
The winning choice? “Hoodie & sneakers” at 38 percent. But “suit” came in a solid second place at 28 percent. Least popular was “midtown uniform” – slacks, button-downed shirt and fleece vest – a look so ubiquitous that it has its own Instagram account.
The tongue-in-cheek poll pointed to a question gripping workplaces in an era when business casual has become so accepted that even the most buttoned-up symbol of Wall Street power has surrendered to it. The 150-year-old company sent an internal memo this week announcing the time was right “to move to firmwide flexible dress code” while urging its 36,000 employees to “exercise good judgment in this regard.”
The drift toward relaxed workplaces began 1990s when companies started introducing “casual Fridays,” said Robert Burke, CEO of Robert Burke Associates, a retail and fashion consulting firm. It rapidly became entrenched with the rise of West Coast tech giants like Amazon and Facebook and their young moguls.
“Goldman was one of the last holdouts of a more formal dress code,” Burke said.
Goldman Sachs first relaxed its dress code for its technology and digital division employees in 2017. Expanding the policy to the rest of its workforce, Goldman cited its “one firm philosophy and the changing nature of workplaces.” The change comes three years after the country’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, adopted its own firmwide flexible dress policy.
The dress code is symbolic of a deeper cultural transformation at financial firms, which are trying to project themselves as innovation hubs where individuality and autonomy is emphasized. Goldman, which said one-quarter of its employees work in engineering-related roles, has in-house incubator to allow employees to develop ideas. J.P. Morgan Chase has plans to open a financial technology campus in California’s Bay Area.
Of course, the business casual conversation often centers around men, probably because finance remains male-dominated at the top levels. Men held nearly 80 percent of senior level and executive positions in U.S. investment banking and securities dealing in 2015, according to research compiled by Catalyst, an organization the promotes women in the workplace.
Women have also long faced a more complicated calculation than men when it comes to workplace attire.
Jennifer Hyman, CEO of Rent the Runway, reminded Goldman Sachs of that in a tweet that gently needled the investment for its male-centric poll. That gave Goldman Sachs the chance to tout its own efforts help women out sartorially: The investment firm put a Rent the Runway drop-off box at its Manhattan headquarters just last month.
