In two online polls, we asked people the following questions:

• How important is it to you that a prospective employer have a casual dress code? {Poll ended 3/31/00}
• How important is it to you that a prospective employer have flextime (flexible working hours)? {Poll ended 4/14/00}

93% of respondents said that flextime was very important or somewhat important to them. Casual dress code was cited by 50% of people as being either somewhat or very important.

What does this mean?

First of all, it shows that implementing flextime is a great way to make your organization more attractive to prospective employees. It is hard to ignore the opinions of 93% of the population.

Secondly, it suggests that not having a casual dress code carries with it some risk, as almost 1/4 of respondents said it was very important to them.

Flextime and casual dress code are "soft" benefits which, if they can be implemented within your business model*, can make your company more attractive to prospective employees. As "soft" benefits, they don't carry with them high monetary costs.

* Of course, flextime and casual dress code must be implemented without harming the business. This means that staffing levels must be appropriate within the context of flextime, and that employees who have direct customer contact must be appropriately dressed.