From time to time even the best brands have to deal with negative feedback. Some sweep it under the carpet, and some tackle it head on. One San Francisco pizza company has gone further than most though – they are making their employees wear t shirts printed with negative feedback found online.

T Shirts include slogans such as ‘This place sucks’ & ‘The pizza was so greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat’

I’m not sure i’d buy a pizza if I walked in and saw the staff proudly sporting that review to be honest, but what a great piece of PR, and a unique approach to reputation management.

Would you consider dealing with your negative feedback this way?

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There are many good reasons for choosing the humble T-shirt as your company uniform:

•    Purchase Cost – buying T-shirts is not expensive, compared to the cost of formal clothing like collared shirts, suits and business jackets
•    Maintenance Cost – this is really low: T-shirts can be hand-washed, washed in a machine, tumble-dried, line-dried, all of which means that the poorest part-time student worker or the most affluent Managing Director will pay about the same amount to wash a T-shirt – the student will do it by hand for pennies and the M.D.’s maid or au pair will shove it in his top of the range washing machine, but the cost per clothing item is about the same. Compare this to the cost of washing and ironing formal shirts or the dry-cleaning costs of jackets and business trousers and skirts, and you can see that the people at the bottom of your company will pay disproportionately more for maintaining their company uniform, because you can’t easily dry-clean your formal business wear at home, especially if you don’t have a washing machine
•    Communication – a lot of companies don’t think about this, and they should. If the T-shirt is your company uniform, you can budget for clothing that conveys a company message to both staff and visitors: a strong bright logo builds your brand image and helps people remember your name, and a slogan or business statement allows your staff to buy into the company ethos. You can’t get that on a business shirt
•    Brand support – it’s much easier to create a strong brand and to have promotional activity on posters, and as giveaways like branded bags, keyrings or other tiny items, if your brand has been strongly established through staff clothing
•    Staff turnover – if you have a degree of staff turnover, such as summer staff, it’s both cheaper and easier to outfit them with uniform because T-shirts come in all sizes and shapes and can easily be held in stock or swiftly re-ordered to meet company needs.

So when you’re planning a company uniform, think smart – think T-shirt!

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Uniform designers and suppliers are noting a surprising fact – new contracts for uniform supply are being signed, despite fears that hospitality industry would cut back spending in the economic downturn. One reason is that many entrepreneurs have seized the chance to get business premises leases at knock-down prices and established their own coffee shops, restaurants, snack-bars and take-aways, all of which need to have a staff uniform for both brand and health and safety reasons. A big mover appears to be branded aprons, which implies that these new businesses are trying to show a down-to-earth and friendly persona

In Devon, the Ashburton Youth Council has kicked up a little storm. The council is composed of young people who try to improve the wellbeing of other young people in the area through organising discos and concerts. Fantastic stuff, you might thing, but despite their good work, several local councillors have expressed concern that they want to wear black hoodies like ‘some criminal gangs’ as one put it. The Youth Council spokesperson suggested that black was a practical colour and would not show the dirt and anyway, the youth council’s logo would be on the front.

Nadia Eweida became famous for taking British Airways to an industrial tribunal.  She worked asa member of check-in staff and was required to wear a uniform. From 2004 until 2007 BA’s uniform policy prohibited the wearing of visible items of jewellery – she wore a silver cross on show on her uniform top. In recent weeks she has lost the appeal following the failure of her tribunal case under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. On appeal the judgement was upheld that she had not suffered discrimination.  The appeal hearing declared that the whole purpose of indirect discrimination is to deal with the problem of group discrimination. The starting point is that persons of the same religion or belief as the claimant should suffer a particular disadvantage as a consequence of holding that religion or belief. Eweida had not provided any evidence that others shared her religious conviction about openly displaying a cross and it was not enough for her to identify a disadvantage which she personally suffered.

This ruling means that although there’s a green light for enforcing reasonable uniform policies, including the wearing of a workplace based uniform or a set range of colours and styles, such as waiting staff always wearing black T-shirts or a garage’s employees always wearing short-sleeved polo shirts topped with high-visibility vests, employers must take care to ensure that dress codes do not negatively affect members of a particular faith group. The key consideration is whether the dress code disadvantages a group of people holding a particular faith. Where a dress code does disadvantage a group, the employer will have to consider whether the dress code is justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. In other words the code is justified if there is a genuine and important reason for it (such as a health and safety issue relating to long or trailing clothing) and the discriminatory impact of the policy has been assessed.

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