RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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With another sweltering summer pushing office thermostats to their limits, a new workplace debate is heating up: Should employees be allowed to wear shorts to work? Instagram’s boss, Adam Mosseri , recently weighed in that he doesn’t see the problem.
“I’m pro. But not everyone can pull them off, and not all shorts are created equal,” Mosseri said on a recent episode of the Throwing Fits podcast . “I’m definitely a pro. When it hits, it hits. But, when it misses…”
While Silicon Valley has always been known for its more casual workplace culture—with some startups even encouraging people to forgo shoes —Mosseri’s comments come as employers continue to wrestle with evolving workplace expectations, particularly among younger workers who increasingly view self-expression as compatible with professionalism.
Gen Z employees have faced criticism—in some cases, even termination —for wearing attire employers have deemed inappropriate or unprofessional.
Michael Palladino , a lecturer in fashion at City University of New York Kingsborough, argued that companies need to modernize outdated ideas about what professional dress should look like.
“We all need to speak the same sartorial language and embrace the reality that the office and all that means, needs to enter the 21st century before it’s too late,” Palladino told Fortune . “Gen Z is confronted by a tsunami of norms that are outdated ranging from ‘sounding professional, dressing professional to acting professional’ with no clear role models.”
Dress codes have become Gen Z’s latest workplace battleground—and some young hires are already paying the price
For many Gen Z workers, figuring out what to wear to the office isn’t as simple as following an unspoken dress code. Much of the generation spent its formative high school or college years attending classes remotely, missing out on the informal cues previous generations may have picked up through internships or in-person jobs.
That’s why, according to Anita Williams Woolley , professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, employers should stop relying on unwritten rules and instead clearly communicate their expectations.
“What would actually matter is a stated policy rather than a personal preference. Norms shift when the expectation is explicit and applies to everyone,” she told Fortune . “It’s also worth noting that a lot of what gets read as Gen Z underdressing is really a legibility problem: a cohort that onboarded remotely never got the opportunity to learn the norms in-person, and many organizations fail to communicate them explicitly.”
Palladino agreed that employers should spend less time policing wardrobes and more time evaluating employees on the quality of their work.
“Gen Z, when entering the job market, needs to focus on one thing: it’s not what you are wearing that earns you respect, it’s what you say and do that matters,” he said.
Even so, the question of whether shorts belong in the office isn’t going away. While Instagram’s Mosseri is in favor, many Americans remain split. A 2023 Ipsos poll found that 58% of 1,020 U.S. adults said shorts can be appropriate workplace attire. And even younger workers continue to wrestle with the question.
“Can I wear shorts? I feel like it feels so wrong to be wearing shorts to work,” one Gen Z TikTok user said while debating what to wear to the office on a day forecast to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
For some workplace experts, the debate isn’t really about the shorts themselves—it’s about where companies draw the line between comfort and professionalism.
“Shorts are a new threshold,” Ron Porter, a senior client partner at Korn Ferry , wrote in conjunction with the Ipsos poll release. “It’s crossing a boundary of informality and casualness.”
That tension reflects a broader clash over workplace expectations. A 2024 survey found that six in 10 employers said they had already fired recent college graduates they had hired , with a perceived lack of professionalism ranking among their top complaints.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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