The term workwear covers a wide range of items from basic staff uniforms to personal protective equipment (PPE). If you’re thinking about whether or not you should invest in it, here are four common misconceptions about workwear you should ignore.
Buying small quantities of workwear is too expensive
You’ll probably have noticed that many large companies (and organisations) have some kind of uniform for their front-line staff. You may be aware that there are lots of good reasons why they do so. You may, however, have thought that buying staff uniforms was a luxury only large companies could afford.
Actually, that’s very far from being the truth. Most company uniforms are essentially standard garments with branding on them. Workwear manufacturers can therefore buy garments in bulk and then add the branding as required using modern industrial embroidery and/or printing. This means that branded workwear is now well within the budget of the average small business.
You can also keep costs down with astute buying. For example, buy embroidered garments for permanent staff but printed ones for temporary staff. Also, make sure that you give staff the exact sizing details (instead of just saying small, medium or large). This will help to stop you from wasting money on clothing that doesn’t fit.
Staff won’t want to wear a uniform
There is a certain level of truth in this but it’s massively overstated. There are some people out there who just don’t want to wear a uniform no matter what. Most people, however, are perfectly happy to wear a uniform as long as it’s practical. Some people actually prefer to wear a uniform as it saves them having to decide what to wear to work.
Uniforms also effectively save your staff money. If they don’t have a uniform, staff may end up buying clothes just for work. Even if they don’t, wearing their own clothes to work is still going to increase the wear and tear on them.
Staff only wear PPE if they absolutely have to
Similar comments apply here. You are always going to come across a few people who just don’t want to wear PPE no matter what. Realistically, your options here are to avoid employing them in the first place or to make it clear that PPE is mandatory. If you go down the latter route, then you will need to take reasonable steps to ensure that rules are genuinely being followed.
Most of the time, however, when staff have issues with PPE, it’s for one of two reasons. Firstly, their memories of PPE may be outdated. Like so much else, it’s improved a lot over the years. Secondly, you, or they, may be using the wrong PPE for their situation.
PPE stands for personal protective equipment. It has to be personalised to be effective. That means firstly, you need to choose the right type of PPE for the given situation. Secondly, it has to be a proper fit for the person who’s using it. If you take care of both of those points, most staff will be absolutely fine about wearing PPE.
Buying workwear creates too much admin
Buying personalised workwear will create some more admin for you but the extra workload should be minimal. If you already have defined brand colours and a brand logo, then you already have the basics of a staff uniform. If you don’t, then this is something you should probably be looking at anyway.
You will need to go through the process of finding a supplier. This is, however, probably a familiar exercise. After that, organizing workwear is essentially the same as regular inventory management. The key point is to make sure that staff understand the sizing so you order the right items for them.
Ross Crayton is the Managing Director of Core Workwear who specialise in personalised and embroidered workwear.
