If you are managing a team working in poorly lit or hazardous conditions, you might be wondering if your employees or team need to wear a hi-vis jacket. It’s always vital to be compliant legally, but most importantly, you must keep your workforce safe. Likewise, you may be a worker wondering when you should be wearing a high-vis jacket to help keep yourself safe in hazardous working conditions. Regardless, wearing a high-vis jacket is essential in many situations. We have put together this useful guide to help you understand when your employees need to wear high-vis clothing.
What is high-vis clothing?
High visibility clothing is an inexpensive way of protecting your staff and maintaining safety in the workplace. The most popular choice of colour is fluorescent yellow, often coupled with reflective strips to add extra visibility to the jacket. These reflective strips or patches help reflect light from car headlights, streetlights, and other sources, which keeps the user illuminated and safe. There are different types of hi-vis clothing available, including jackets, vests, shirts, and trousers.
When might you need high-vis jackets or clothing?
There are many factors that determine whether an employee needs to wear hi-vis clothing, from the task they’re performing to the location where the work is taking place. We will break down a few of the most common scenarios requiring high-vis workwear below.
For visibility in hazardous environments
Hi-vis clothing reduces the risk of accidents in busy areas where there’s regular traffic or hazardous materials, such as the construction industry or industrial premises. It’s also effective for motorcycle couriers to help prevent accidents or life-threatening injuries from occurring. Health and Safety regulations require staff in these types of locations and industries to wear high visibility workwear.
Likewise, in large storage aisles, warehouses or environments where forklifts are being operated, branded workwear such as hi-vis jackets must be worn as a minimum of protective attire. Depending on what the lighting is like in the work environment and whether there is any electrical illumination, staff may need full body hi-vis clothing to ensure that any drivers or oncoming traffic can clearly see them. In traffic management positions, this is particularly important as clear visibility of oncoming traffic is vital for the safety of all staff involved.
To enhance security
High-visibility jackets aren’t just used by employees for safety but often they are used as an effective way of identifying staff and authorised personnel at a corporate level too. This is particularly the case at access-controlled areas where security can be an issue. With a hi-vis jacket, it’s easier for approaching visitors to find staff and security employees if they need to. Hi-vis jackets work well in increasing the awareness of presence of different staff members at events and provides visible corporate identity.
Emergency situations
In addition to hazardous environments and for security purposes, staff need to wear hi-vis jackets in emergency situations and settings as well. Medical staff and emergency services require high-visibility clothing for numerous reasons, from differentiating them in a crowd or emergency situation to allowing them to be approached quickly during a commotion. In circumstances where safety may become compromised either through hazardous equipment, materials or due to a dangerous environment, hi-vis jackets help to alleviate some of the risk and keep your employees as safe as possible.
If you need customised high-vis jackets to help keep your employees or workforce, please contact our team. We have supplied thousands of individuals with professionally branded high-vis workwear over the last 20 years.