Slashdot Mirror
Uniforms For the Help Desk?
An anonymous reader writes "I am an IT worker in a mid sized company with approximately 500 employees. There are 30 people on the IT staff, 6 of whom are on the help desk. Our help desk does have significant visibility in the company, and most people know us by face (some by name). Recently the idea has been floated up the management chain to have these help desk workers wear IT department branded shirts. The idea is to promote visibility and unity. Wearing of these shirts would be mandatory Monday through Thursday. The shirts would not be identical (there would be several styles offered). We would be the only department with specific garments outside of the normal business casual dress code. Is management out of line with the industry in promoting this sort of policy change? Is the singling out of 6 employees as 'the IT guys' a step in the right direction, or does it detract from the professionalism that we are trying to display as a department?"
Does the company have an existing dress code? Do the IT guys follow that dress code well?
Let's be honest: IT guys have a reputation for being a bit sloppy. If that's the case here, perhaps the right approach would be for the team to do a better job of looking professional.
But if the team is already meeting the same expectations as the other employees, this just sounds like a giant waste of time. Money, energy and resources wasted on this would probably be better spent on something worthwhile that would actually have an impact on the team's ability to provide quality service.
What are most of you DOING? I work for a company with over 800 employees, approximately 600 or so who directly use computers, that has 16 locations in the Eastern USA and we make do with TWO.
Corporatism != Free Market
Recently the idea has been floated up the management chain to have these help desk workers wear IT department branded shirts. The idea is to promote visibility and unity.
Is the singling out of 6 employees as 'the IT guys' a step in the right direction, or does it detract from the professionalism that we are trying to display as a department?
Better question: Is your Help Desk projecting an image of service or are they too focused as being seen as "professionals"?
It seems to me that your management wants to label your Help Desk staff so that people will be more comfortable in approaching them with issues. This, if it were true, is a HUGE RED FLAG to everyone in your department. If your Help Desk isn't helpful, its just a desk, and it is likely way, way, way too expensive in that light. If the shirts thing doesn't work, expect workforce changes.
Someone needs to recon what your management thinks of the team as a whole, without focusing too much on the dress code issue, before you decide to respond in any particular way. Changes need to be made. Preferably changes to your liking rather than the more heavy-handed flavor.
This is what happens as the company grows .....
It goes Dilbert on itself.
This is what happens when people too stupid to do any real work and who've been replaced by a bash script gets promoted to middle management because you can't get rid of them due to union rules and stuff.
You know how they got the management position? A: The parkinson law : Upper management doesn't want their job threatened by a younger, smarter, more active, more educated middle manager, so they promote somebody dumber then themselves and the guy under hires some1 dumber then himself and so on
Uniforms is lack a respect for you tech support guys, uniform is a school's tool to reduce violence and bullying by unifying every1 thus eliminating gangs and groups. It's not for a job place, it's a joke to think about it, if they had respect, they would ask you to wear a suit and a tie, but then you would be in par with ur middle management guy, he is not gonna put you on that level, he is also prolly afraid that you'll write another bash script to replace the middle management positions.
Hey while I think of it, a script that creates and assigns random useless task and complains a lot could replace my boss.
One of the companies i worked at had a standard,
Tan pants and
dress shirt or company logo'd shirt.
But it applied to everyone, even the president.
I'd find it a bit demeaning if it was limited to the help desk only.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
While I would much prefer to wear my own clothes, it might be ok if my work uniform was comfortable fabric, not overly baggy, paid for by the company, and saved me from having to do extra laundry and ironing.
I spent a summer working at a car dealership and you got a weeks worth of uniforms or so slipped into your locker...toss them in the laundry bin when you are done and they will show up clean and pressed a few days later. Only had to pay for anything if they went missing...repairs were taken care of by attaching a little card to it when you threw it in the laundry bin.
If I had to pay for the uniform parts AND take care of them...then I would feel like I was working fast food
Bottles.
The management over there clearly sees IT as a bunch of over paid blue collar workers that only do what they do since they could not get an MBA from an Ivy League school. I may be over reacting here, but I see it as flat out disrespect.
At a helpdesk level, IT staff are just a bunch of replaceable skilled technicians. Why do you think helpdesk is one of the first things outsourced by non-IT companies? Helpdesk staff are an off-the-shelf commodity in employment terms.
That's not disrespect, that's simple reality.
Server admin, network specialists, storage gurus, developers all have a stronger argument that they're doing a professional job that needs in-depth expertise and has a career path, but helpdesk? No.
Not sure that justifies uniforms though...