As your business grows, uniforms can serve as a canvas to express your brand's personality and nurture pride in the team. A commitment to branded workwear can also ensure your team meets local safety standards, while also elevating your overall image.
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- Do all tradies need to invest in workwear?
- Promote your trade business
- First impressions
- A cohesive team
- Security, safety and hygiene
1. Do all tradies need to invest in workwear?
As business owners, choosing what your team wears ensures that they look sharp and are wearing clothes that are best suited for their environment. Opting for durable, branded workwear is a solid investment for trade business owners because it is purpose-built to prevent rips, tears, and stains.
Specialised workwear
There are plenty of situations where tradies need to wear specialised workwear. Often, this is to protect workers from extreme environmental conditions, like intense heat, shocks, or corrosive chemicals. In these situations, a trade uniform must adhere to strict rules and may even be considered as personal protective equipment (PPE).
Supplying your team with branded PPE not only enhances your brand's visibility and reputation but also ensures compliance with legal requirements. This assurance not only safeguards your team's well-being and improves your company's credibility, but allows your company to bid for Government contracts and pass higher safety standards.
Residential trades
For those working in residential settings, uniforms made from moisture-wicking fabrics, breathable antibacterial bamboo, or cooling air vent panels can be a game-changer. Clean, movable and well-fitted uniforms support your team in staying comfortable, fresh, and presentable during their work.
2. Promote your trade business
In a competitive marketplace, a unique tradie uniform stands out as an efficient and cost-effective way to promote your trade business. Tradie uniforms don’t need to be boring or unstylish. The traditional boundary between work and casual clothes is fading, with many tradie uniforms designed to transition from the workplace to after-hours activities easily. By choosing a modern design and style, you can maximise the chance your team will wear it offsite with pride.
Many workwear wholesalers provide in-house design services along with options for screen printing and embroidery, enabling you to integrate your company's logo and branding into your team uniform. A bit of creativity can help you stand out as your crew moves about town. Branded workwear serves as an effective conversation starter, allowing the public to instantly recognise your team for the services they provide.
Ways to brand your workwear:
- Embroidered: Long-lasting and peel-resistant branding, your design is stitched directly into the material.
- Printed: A cost-effective, although less durable, branding option where your print is stamped into the material.
- Screen printing: A balance of cost-effectiveness and durability, screen printing allows multiple colours and intricate designs to be printed on the material.
- Transfer printing: Transfer printing is a good choice for branding multiple items of clothing, although it may not be as long-lasting as other methods.
3. First impressions
Wearing a uniform goes a long way in increasing your credibility with customers, particularly when visiting them in their homes. Uniforms create a sense of legitimacy and safety, a way to immediately recognise where they are from (and who to call if something goes wrong).
Uniforms can also increase your team's confidence and pride in their work, particularly if their name is on display. Embroidering your team's nicknames on their shirts or polos is fun for the team and also useful for customers, subbies, and new hires.
In any setting, uniforms reinforce your brand's identity. They motivate your staff to represent the company professionally, as their actions whilst in public become a reflection of your business.
4. A cohesive team
When you look like a team, you feel like a team, whether you're 2 or 20. Uniforms are pivotal in creating a sense of unity amongst the crew. In a good employee, wearing a uniform generally leads to an increased responsibility they feel towards their actions and how they affect your business. Just remember the opposite is also true — you don’t want your business name on display in a worksite fail compilation or on the news.
5. Security, safety and hygiene
Supplying a uniform eliminates the risk of someone on your team choosing something unsuitable to wear on the job. This ensures not only a consistent and professional appearance but also relieves employees of the burden of finding the right thing to wear. However, this does mean providing a realistic amount of shirts, pants, or coveralls which ensures that your team can maintain a professional and hygienic appearance throughout the week. While it may not guarantee that they'll end the day looking fresh, it's a proactive step to start each day looking and smelling good.
Tradify helps tradies all over the world spend less time on admin, and more time on the tools. See how it could work for your trade business by starting a free 14-day trial or book your free product demo today!
