5 ways to lower your uniform costs

In today’s financially precarious climate, cutting costs and meeting your departmental budgets are more important than ever. Ensuring that costs are as low as possible whilst also ensuring that this doesn’t affect the quality or quantity of work that your business produces can be a difficult task.

Uniform and workwear costs can soon stack up and eat into budgets. We’ve pulled together a list of 5 ways you can lower you uniform costs without compromising on quality.

1. Be selective – while it may seem logical that the cheapest items represent best value for money, that isn’t always the case. Cheaper, poor quality items are unlikely to last as long as more expensive, better quality items. Investing in good quality uniform and workwear may end up cheaper in the long run, as replacements for worn out or broken items will be needed less frequently. As well as this, giving your employees good quality items can encourage them to take better care of them, meaning fewer cases of broken or lost pieces of workwear and uniform. Being specific about which items you order can also help. Seeking professional guidance on the best materials for the job can help you identify products that will provide longevity, saving you money overall.
2. Give people ownership – generic items that are issued by a company rarely feel like they belong to the employee who receives them, and this can mean it’s unlikely to be treated with the same care as if it belonged to the individual. A lack of care for uniform and PPE leads to items being lost or broken, meaning higher costs for the company as these items need to be replaced. Giving employees a sense of ownership over their workwear can be achieved through rethinking the way you order your supplies. By ordering your uniform to suit each individual in the form of wearer packs (as opposed to buying bulk numbers of items in a range of sizes and hoping there’s enough of each to suit everyone), you are sending the message that the items have been ordered specifically for each employee, lessening the feeling that the items are disposable or that a replacement is easy to obtain. Not only does this encourage employees to care for their workwear, it also means you’re ordering fewer items overall, and the need for holding stock of spare items is reduced, saving you money and resource. It also means that when replacements need to be ordered, you have a clearer view of exactly where the spend is going, and can identify any areas where usage is unusually high.
3. Order more – the time and resource spent on ordering replacement uniform and workwear can be considerable over time. Giving an employee one or two sets of uniform can be the problem, particularly if they’re expected to wear it every day, as uniform that is worn and washed more regularly wears out more quickly. Issuing your employees with more sets of uniform means they’re able to rotate more often, lengthening the time between replacements being required. As an added bonus, your staff will look smarter for longer, too, as faded and worn-out uniform will be less common.
4. Take control – control your spending on workwear and uniform by putting processes in place ahead of time. Placing restrictions on which items can be ordered means you can control exactly what your uniform budget is spent on, regardless of which team member is placing the order. Approval levels mean that you can set a budget and any orders that exceed this need to be approved by you or a member of management before it can be processed, meaning unusual spending is flagged and you can stay in control of the use of budget. As well as having the right processes and controls in place, make sure you’re able to effectively analyse data on your spending. Being able to monitor, pull reports and analyse spend can help you to identify future ways of cutting costs, and you can easily report on exactly where the money is going.
5. Automate – uniform and workwear ordering for a large team can be a tedious and unnecessarily complex task. Larger businesses often have 5 or 6 people dedicated to managing, ordering and distributing uniform and workwear to hundreds of employees. The resource cost of even one person devoting more time than necessary to managing uniform orders can be a hidden cost, and one that takes a toll on other areas of your business if an important employee is distracted from more important tasks. With automated ordering systems, the resource requirements for managing uniform ordering can be reduced. sizing information is easily inputted and stored for future orders, wearer-packing means that sorting and distributing clothing is as simple as reading a name on a package, and management of ordering is simplified through an online portal. Instead of having whole departments working on ensuring your workforce is kitted out with everything they need, you can upskill and reallocate team members to focus on driving your business towards its goals and improving processes and operations, adding value to your business and reducing unnecessary labour.

Find out how Industrial Workwear can help lower your uniform costs

Industrial Workwear’s expert team have the industry knowledge to help you choose the best value uniform for your team and keep them looking great for less. Even better, with Industrial Workwear’s unique online ordering portal, you can take control of ordering and spend, making managing your budgets a breeze. To find out more, request a demo today.