Companies implement corporate uniform policies for a number of reasons. Different from a dress code, which provides guidelines on how employees should dress while at work, a corporate uniform policy removes the guessing game for both employees and employers. As a result, uniform guidelines ensure your employees show up properly dressed and ready for work every day.
Reasons Why Uniform Compliance is Important
Having an appropriately dressed workforce is critical to your company’s success. Employee uniform compliance is important because it:
- Increases brand awareness. When designing an employee uniform program, companies choose colors, logo placement and other embellishments to represent the brand identity. Employee uniform compliance provides steady exposure to your company’s brand and helps your brand stand out in a crowded and competitive marketplace.
- Extends brand reach. Employees are also brand ambassadors and uniform compliance is critical to delivering a consistent customer brand experience during every interaction with the company. This, in turn, increases customer satisfaction and ultimately customer loyalty.
- Helps ensure a safe work environment. Uniform guidelines help employees stay safe while on the job. When employees wear the proper attire, they not only protect themselves from potential harmful incidents but a company can also reduce the number of accidents at work and lower insurance costs.
- Improves trust. When everyone complies, an employee uniform policy can instill a sense of trust among coworkers as well as customers. For coworkers, everyone feels like a member of the team working toward the same goal. And customers can easily recognize your brand and trust your company’s representative to deliver on your brand promise each and every time.
Tips to Improve Employee Uniform Compliance
Individual style may still shine through even when companies implement a corporate uniform policy. Simple options include allowing a range of pant colors under an official apron or providing multiple fabric options for the official uniform shirt.
In addition to determining how much style is allowed and how strictly the uniform guidelines will be enforced, managers are often assigned the daily task of reinforcing the employee uniform policy.
For managers looking for ways to ensure uniforms are worn properly, here are a few tips:
Be a Good Role Model
Your employees look to you for leadership and that also includes how you dress in the workplace. If you don’t demonstrate how to properly wear your uniform then it’s going to be very hard for them to do the same. Make sure you come to work dressed to impress in uniform every day, then your employees will take notice and review their approach to uniform compliance.
Remind Employees They are Invaluable Members of the Company
Even though everyone wears a uniform, their individual talent still shines through and contributes to company success. Emphasizing this message among your workforce is vital to employee uniform compliance because you want them to be proud to wear their uniform each and every day.
Create a Look Book
Sometimes simply wearing the uniform isn’t enough. Instead, make it clear to your employees what acceptable uniform compliance looks like with an easy access guide on how to wear them (e.g., tucked or untucked) and include as many business-specific and environmental variations as needed. Distribute the guide, update it as needed and make it available in the common room so employees can double check their outfit before and during work.
Consider Alternative Apparel Options
Expanding approved apparel options is a great way to improve employee uniform compliance. Changing up the style and offering additional fabric options for personal comfort, while supplementing standard attire with secondary colors can still follow brand and uniform guidelines but give employees more flexibility. If employees are more comfortable wearing their uniform, it will likely lead to more uniform compliance.
Managed Uniform Programs Can Help
Above all, making it easy to acquire company-approved attire will improve your employee uniform compliance. Whether you’re adding new team members or updating current employees’ uniforms, a managed uniform program like Unitec Distribution Systems can help ensure your uniform purchases and distribution are headache-free. Look for a managed uniform program that emphasizes individual ordering, offers multiples uniform options, eliminates overage and optimizes delivery.
Still not sure if a managed uniform program is right for you?
Uniform Program Evaluation Tool
Use this free online evaluation to see how your program is performing and find opportunities for improvement.
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