Twenty-two percent of office workers spend more than £50 a month on clothing just for work, a survey can reveal. This equates to £600 each year, or £27,000 over the course of a career*, which is above the average annual wage of a worker in the UK (£26,500).

The study, carried out by office stationary suppliers, Viking, reveals the pressures that office workers across the UK feel when it comes to the clothing they wear for work, resulting with 1 in 10 workers being unhappy with their workplace attire. Overall, 52 percent of workers said they had felt pressured into buying new clothing to ‘keep up appearances’ around the office. When asked why, the majority felt their fellow colleagues would judge them for not revamping their wardrobe. 

42 percent feared that female colleagues would judge them, closely followed by 41 percent fearing the same thing from male counterparts. Another revelation was that those with a more formal dress code felt that women had it easier when it came to dressing in the workplace, whereas smart-casual, casual and uniformed workplaces thought men were less likely to be judged.

This suggests that women may be more conscious of their day to day clothing, whereas men feel greater pressure to smarten up in formal meetings, presentation and other situations. 

Gemma Terrar, European HR Business Partner at Viking, said: “As a HR professional, I’ve seen it become more and more common to have a casual dress code – possibly due to the influence of millennials in our workplace. “As a result, wearing a shirt and tie is not only becoming a thing of the past, but our restrictions for what counts as ‘business formal’ have relaxed. Now, it isn’t uncommon to find a business meeting without a suit jacket in sight.”