If you're stocking up on hi-vis safety vests, you might initially decide to buy products that are all the same colour. However, you can benefit from some unique perks if you buy vests in different colours, especially if you work on larger construction projects with various crews onsite.
Keep reading to learn why you should colour-coordinate your work vests.
Improve identification on the job
When you work on larger projects, you have more people onsite. You'll have your own teams and, potentially, you'll bring in specialist subbies or other companies to work on certain parts of the job.
If everyone on the site wears the same colour hi-vis vest, then it's hard to identify individuals, especially from a distance. You’ll have to spend extra time tracking down people when you need to talk to them or get them to do something.
If you give out vests in different colours, then you split up your workforce into easily identifiable groups. For example, you could give out yellow vests to your site managers and supervisors. Your general crew could wear orange, while your plumbing team could wear blue.
If you do this, then you—and everyone working on the job—can easily identify people by their job or trade.
Boost site safety
While you take care to meet general safety requirements and objectives, you can almost always find ways to improve safety. For example, you might need to take special measures to deal with visitors who occasionally come onsite for short periods.
During the course of the job, the site's owners and their consultants might need to visit. So you could have architects, engineers, surveyors and local planning officials onsite periodically. You're also likely to have your own contacts popping in and out, such as delivery drivers.
You have to keep an eye on your visitors because you have a duty of care to keep them safe.
If you keep one colour of hi-vis vest for visitors, then they also become easily identifiable. If a visitor inadvertently wanders into a hazardous or unsafe area, then your workers would immediately know that they shouldn't be there because of the colour of their vest.
This enhanced safety also works for your crews. Sometimes, areas of your site will be hazardous, and you'll want to keep people who shouldn't be in those areas away. If everyone is colour-coded, then your people can police this themselves.
You might also have parts of a project when the colour of your vests needs to factor in background colours and contrast. For example, if you're doing some work on a road and have a lot of orange traffic cones and signs in the area, then you might worry that your crew won't be visible if they wear orange vests.
In this scenario, you could simply switch to a different colour, such as yellow. Your people will be more visible and safer.
Reduce timewasting
You won't always easily keep your workers on the job all of the time. Even if your crews are usually diligent, you might have a few people who like to waste time and take more breaks than they should.
If your people wear different coloured vests, then you know where they should be at any given time. If someone from one crew takes an extended break to talk to mates on another part of the site, then they will stand out. Their vest colour will give them away and make it harder for them to be unnoticed.
To find out more about vest styles and colours, contact Ace Workwear. We also stock a full range of other hi-vis workwear that will keep your crews safe and comfortable.