How to Start an Ecofriendly Casual Friday

By now, Casual Fridays are a standard business practice in many companies. But what if you could take that concept one step further and encourage ecofriendly values by creating Ecofriendly Casual Fridays?

An Ecofriendly Casual Friday would still allow the business casual dress code of a standard Casual Friday. However, employees would be encouraged to wear at least one piece of ecofriendly apparel. Ecofriendly apparel options would include items that are made with organic, sustainable, biodegradable or recycled materials. You might also want to add social consciousness categories to this list such as fair trade, USA made, and union made.

Sounds easy enough. But once you start looking for the ecofriendly (or fair trade) label in many popular clothing retailers, you'll find that items qualifying for one or more of these categories are scarce. What's more is that it is often impossible to determine if an item qualifies while shopping in the store. You would have to do some significant supply chain research to determine many items' qualifications.

With the retail arena scenario as it presently is, you might want to provide a way for employees to share why the item they chose to wear is ecofriendly and where they purchased the item. That way they can assist fellow employees in finding good ecofriendly sources and make it an educational exercise as well.

What would employees gain from this exercise? First, employees would become aware of how non-ecofriendly many of their everyday purchases are. The goal would be to encourage them to vote with their wallets by redirecting spending to those items and retailers that are aligned with these values.

There may be some resistance by employees to participate because they may not share ecofriendly values. So whatever you do, do not turn this into a battleground. Just make it a fun program to participate in. You might even want to start a contest to reward those who wear either the greatest number of ecofriendly clothing items on a given day or those who wear the most ecofriendly items (i.e. 100% organic, post-consumer recycled, etc.). A gift card to an ecofriendly clothing retailer would be an appropriate prize.

To jumpstart the program, why not consider imprinting some ecofriendly promotional T-shirts with your company name to distribute to your staff? That way those who may not be very interested in expending effort or money to find their own ecofriendly clothing can at least participate by wearing the company-provided T-shirt.

If your business is already in the ecofriendly arena or instituting green initiatives, establishing an Ecofriendly Casual Friday would be a way to help bolster these values in your company and, through your employees, to the community at large.

Workwear Etiquette - How Casual is Your Friday?

Several years ago I worked in a spa salon with very strict workwear policies. It had to be white top, black bottom - every day, no exceptions, even for the office workers. The casual Fridays never existed either. I realize that some places, like hospitals for example, have to keep their workers wearing uniforms at all times, but there are some guidelines for non-hospital work places in terms of their business attire etiquette.

Casual Fridays:

Casual Fridays are a great invention for those stiff, old school offices that require suits and ties every day of the week. While casual Fridays do remain casual, there are still certain guidelines to follow. You don't want to appear in your office wearing a see-through skirt or your grandpa's pants that you wear at home. Also, if you do have clients coming in, you want to stay on a more professional side even on a casual Friday.

Jean pants, skirts and jackets are a great alternative to your office workwear on a casual Friday. If you decide to go with jeans it's good idea to chose a darker wash pant with a casual sweater or shirt.

Colour Palette:

Darker earth colours or neutral colours are your best choice to go with.

Accessories:

Accessorising is the best way to spice up your office attire. Even if you work in an office with very strict dress code, you can always find a perfect little accessory for your outfit to make it less boring and have more personality.

You can always accessorise your dark top with a bright, multi-coloured scarf. A coloured belt can help to brighten up your trousers, or a funky watch can be the perfect item to go with that plane white shirt.

No matter what colour or accessory you decide to go with, always remember that minimalism is your best friend, especially when it comes to choosing your corporate workwear. And unlike that book in a bookstore, you are going to be judged by your "cover" in your work place.

How To Do a Proper Follow Friday on Twitter

What is #followfriday? Every Friday, you'll see thousands of people on Twitter using this phrase in their tweets. So what exactly is #followfriday? Follow Friday is a way people recommend their followers in their tweets to other followers to follow on Twitter. Don't get it?

Alright imagine you're in a PARTY. There are tons of people in that party, most of them you don't know. Maybe me you know me, then I'll shake your hand and recommend you to my other friends (followers) in that party (Twitter). I'll tell them "Hey meet Mike, he's a great guy! he owns three successful business"

Then my friends (followers) will get interested in knowing you and you'll be friends (they follow you on Twitter). Here are some mistakes that you shouldn't make.

DON'Ts

1. Recommend WITHOUT reasons.

I know that you want to recommend as many people as possible but without any reasons, nobody will look at them and consider following them.

Why you shouldn't do this. Using the same party situation like above, imagine me shouting "hey meet these guys here" Firstly, I sound like a crazy person. Secondly there isn't a personal touch in it.

2. Recommend everyone on your list.

Its alright to be friendly but recommending everyone on your list is not a way. First you'll be spamming the timeline, secondly it looks spammy. Why you shouldn't do this. Again imagine me going around the party shouting hey meet him, hey meet them, hey meet him, her and him. At first maybe people will listen. After going on for 10 minutes. Do you think anyone bother listening to me anymore?

So how do you do a proper Follow Friday? Some of you might have a small list of followers, some might have a bigger list of followers. Here are some methods you can use.

DOs

1. Send personal Follow Friday tweets

This is a proper way to do a Follow Friday. It has information about the person rather than just tweeting follow him, her, him, him, her, her. It gives you the information of what kind of of guy or girl they are and why you should follow them.

2. Use Mr.Tweet

@Mrtweet is similar like the technique above where you can recommend someone personally. When you recommend someone using Mr Tweet it will be stored in their website.

3. Small groups

If you have tons of followers you can use this technique. Recommend four to six people in your list and tell people why they should follow them. Its clean and it has a reason why as well.

4. Create a Twitter list and call it "Follow Friday"

You can also create a list and call if Follow Friday. Since you have tons of followers it is going to be hard for you to recommend everyone on your list. However you can add them in a list and name it Follow Friday and ask your followers to follow the list or follow the people on the list.