When it comes to fulfilling your warehouse team’s summer workwear requirements, how much thought do you give to what they might want to wear as individuals, rather than just what they need?
The reason we ask is that giving your workers some choice and control over what they wear at work is known to be a key factor in ensuring their wellbeing and happiness – which in turn fuels greater productivity. More than that though, these days it’s just the right thing to do.
The importance of choice
When it comes to selecting workwear for your warehouse team, there is a lot to think about. Some of the areas to consider are:
What different job roles are there within your warehouse team, and how does the physical activity required to fulfil them differ?
For example, those required to walk around the warehouse all day picking and packing orders will require a different kind of safety trainer to anyone standing still for long periods of time at a returns or rework station.
Likewise, the type of safety gloves they need will differ depending on the materials being handled, with those engaged in highly dexterous work requiring greater flexibility of finger and thumb movement.
Are you providing the women in your team with the option for clothing and footwear designed specifically for their needs?
Most women will benefit from wearing safety footwear made on a woman’s last, and will be safest and most comfortable in clothing that fits them properly, rather than wearing oversized men’s-fit or so-called ‘unisex’ clothing.
While not all manufacturers make items specifically designed for women’s bodies, it is worth choosing one that does.
If standardising your team’s ‘look’ is important to you, a good workwear supplier will be able to advise on which items of clothing come in both men’s and women’s fits to enable consistency of colourways and branding for uniforms.
Find out more: Discover the best workwear for standardising uniforms.
If you haven’t already provided your team with a choice of different workwear items for different seasons, it is important to do so.
Warehouses can get very cold in winter, and very hot in the summer, so it is highly unlikely that your workers will be comfortable in the same item of clothing all year round.
For winter, you’ll want to think about providing thermal underwear, socks and thermal gloves, while in the summer wicking fabrics are a must to help keep your workers cool on the job.
Instead of a hi vis vest being an additional layer to wear in the heat, you could choose to provide hi vis polo shirts for summer for those working around moving vehicles.
Have you ever asked your teams what they think of the workwear and PPE you provide, or if they have any suggestions for improvements?
When it comes to introducing new products, do you try before you buy, and ask your workers for their honest feedback?
Creating a feedback loop is one way to ensure that you’re always fulfilling your workers’ needs, and keeping them happy and productive at work.
Choice within approved parameters
One of the best methods to provide your employees with a choice of workwear and PPE while retaining control over product quality, brand consistency and spend is to invest in an online ordering portal.
At iSB Group, our own order management system – ControliT – allows businesses to delegate the ordering of key workwear and PPE items to individuals and teams, while retaining all the necessary controls to ensure compliance with health and safety as well as organisational requirements.
In effect, it allows businesses to create their own catalogue of pre-approved items, to which they can then add different users with differing levels of ordering freedom.
Limits can be placed on what may be ordered, when and how often, allowing your employees to take charge of what they choose to wear safe in the knowledge that they are doing so with your approval.
Find out more: Read our blog 6 Benefits Of An Online Workwear Ordering Portal
For more information on the summer workwear we offer at iSB Group, read our Summer Workwear Guide.