Would you dress like this in the office?

As the end of the year approaches, it’s common in a number of offices to reflect on what went well and what didn’t go so well in the year just gone.

The bosses of the Australian Tax service will have an interesting bit of reflecting to do.

Some of the 23,000 Australian tax office workers were reportedly sent a memo by taxation service delivery chief Robert Ravanello telling them that there were too many “street casual outfits” being worn and too much “bare flesh” was on display.

Mr Ravenello told his staff that some of them were “dressing too casually or immodestly, therefore impacting on the perceptions of the professionalism of the Australian Tax Office (ATO)”.

He went on to say that items of clothing including thongs, board shorts and revealing attire were inappropriate for the ATO workplace.

Now before some of you get alarmed that people are walking around in thongs in the tax office it’s worth pointing out that in Australia the word “thongs” refers to flip-flops (sandals) and not underwear.

While some people would argue it doesn’t matter what you wear in the office of long as you can do your job properly and that tax is exciting enough without all this showing off of “bare flesh”, I guess the key message is that you should dress professionally and appropriately for wherever you work.

All of this is interesting but if you are like me and are based in Europe where its currently winter I think it’s unlikely I’ll be walking around in board shorts, showing off bare flesh and looking out the office window in my thongs (whether they are on my feet or around my waist).

The team here at ExP are now heading off on our Christmas break and so on behalf of everyone here at ExP I’d like to thank all of you that read our blog and especially those of you that have got in touch with your kind words and comments.

Thank you also if you’re one of our 125,000 Facebook fans and have a great festive season and we’ll be back blogging in January 2015.