If you understand the wide range of benefits that custom workwear brings to a business, but also have a large turnover of temp staff, here's how to minimise expenditure and treat temporary workers fairly.

Why You Should Treat Temp Staff Well When It Comes To Custom Workwear

There could be any number of reasons as to why your business sees a high turnover of temporary staff. It might be the nature of your seasonal industry or it might be your own particular business model.

From fruit farms to retail stores, there are certain times where more staff are needed than others and, in fact, some times where next to no staff are needed at all. Agency and temporary employees are the only way to facilitate this.

Alternatively, you might be the type of industry that has a similar workload throughout the year, but due to the type of work, the location or the money involved, you might also see a high turnover of temporary staff.

Whatever the reason for your high number and high turnover of temp staff; what's certain is that you understand the need to treat them right. And custom workwear is just another extension of that.

It's vital to treat temporary employees well for many reasons. Here's just a few:

Attracting Staff: A regular turnover of temporary staff means that you're regularly going to be going through the hiring process. Every time that you treat a staff member poorly and they leave your business, they will communicate this to people they know, any agency they find work through and colleagues in their new workplace. This will chip away at your ability to attract staff to work for your business. Maintaining Morale: Being a temporary worker means being susceptible to suffering with low morale. It's often because the temporary job is a stop gap on a longer career journey, so the role isn't the primary focus or easy to be motivated for. Or it's because a person is aware that this is a fixed term temporary contract so will be looking for work again sometime soon. This means that temp staff need extra care in order to maintain a high level of morale and stay productive. Staying Legal: Given the range of high profile news stories and inquiries into nil-hours contracts, agency staff and ways around not meeting the real living wage; mistreating temp staff could actually be illegal. Especially if they've been at the company so long that they have the same statutory rights as permanent employees. Managing Your Brand: More related to custom workwear, perhaps, than any of the others in this list, it's important to consider your brand when looking at how you treat your temporary staff. Mismatched, rag-tab worker's own clothing and a lack of brand awareness from staff will severely impact how your brand is perceived. Treat temp staff with the same concern you would permanent employees when it comes to custom workwear in order to make sure you manage your brand properly.

But how is all of that done without wasting money on custom workwear or branded clothing which will be lost when the temporary staff leave?

 

Temp Staff And Custom Workwear: Ways To Avoid Wasting Money Entry Level Products

One way to save money is to simply issue temporary staff with entry level price point clothing items. This means that should any staff not remain an employee long enough for their clothing to be put to full use, you won't have wasted money on higher-spec, more expensive garments.

The downside to doing this is that staff could feel under valued, especially if permanent employees are issued with superior clothing. But proper communication and offering the option for them to upgrade their company clothing, at their own expense, should resolve this.

Issue On Arrival

Another idea that some companies employ is to issue staff with their custom workwear at the start of a shift and collect it from them when they finish. This ensures that clothing items at least remain clearly as the company's property.

But, then again, it does mean it needs to be policed and managed. It depends on how your operation works and whether it's feasible for staff to quickly and easily change clothing pre and post shift.

Sign An Agreement

The most in depth way of controlling spend on temporary worker clothing is to put some sort of agreement in place which protects the company from costs being incurred.

Firstly, you could put a clause in your terms of employment that the cost of the uniform will be reimbursed to staff after completion of their employment and the items have been returned in a reasonable condition.

Secondly, you could ask staff to sign an agreement that they will return the items in reasonable condition after their employment ceases or they'll have to reimburse the company for the cost of replacements.

The first option might make you a less favourable employer to work for and make it harder to attract staff. The second option might see you struggle to recoup the cost after staff have left.

Another thing to note is that you cannot apply terms like this against PPE and safety clothing. Read more in this blog about writing policies.

 

Choose Your Custom Workwear Branding Options

All that's left to do once you know how to treat temp staff when it comes to custom workwear and uniform items is to decide on how you want to customise your clothing. Will you choose printed or embroidery techniques? Do you know the differences?

We've put a free guide together to help you find out more and make the right decision.