Safety has always been of great importance to the workplace, and health and safety legislation has been in a constant state of expansion to enshrine safety provisions and processes in law. Personal protective equipment, or PPE, is a core part of health and safety protocol, ensuring workers are protected from hazardous materials and risks presented by dangerous tasks such as the lifting of heavy objects or the handling of noxious chemicals. One such item of PPE, the high-visibility vest or jacket, is an item which is under-estimated in terms of its importance to the wearer and the site. The following represent four key reasons hi-viz clothing is so important to a work-site or wearer.

Accident Prevention

The essential and ultimate reason high-visibility clothing is so crucial is the prevention of accidents. High-viz clothing increases visibility with both reflective and fluorescent materials, maximising the likelihood that the wearer will be seen by other people – whether other workers on a construction site, or someone in control of heavy equipment or goods. It is a legal requirement for employers to provide employees with hi-viz clothing if they are likely to encounter risks in their work, as it minimises the likelihood of injury from moving machinery, and also enables workers to understand where other workers are in relation to them before carrying out a potentially dangerous task. Hi-viz garments are also commonly used by cyclists, to ensure they are visible to motorists and reduce the risk of collision.

Safe Overnight Working

The UK’s seasons bring with them changes to the day/night cycle, which can prove difficult for active work sites. Specifically, winter in the UK brings shorter days, with the shortest day being only 7 hours and 50 minutes long – with low visibility at the start and end of the day to boot. Investing in hi-viz vests for workers on a site ensures their safety in low-light conditions, allowing work to continue and preventing the need for projects to shorten working days in the winter.

Easy Worker Identification

Providing hi-viz clothing as a business also presents the opportunity for issuing personalised company garments to each worker. Doing this allows foremen or supervisors to know exactly who is working where, even in low-light conditions or at night. This can save significant periods of time over the course of a project, and enable clearer communication across the site – keeping mistakes to a minimum, and allowing for co-ordination of large movements, installs or deliveries.

Easy to Wear

Hi-viz clothing, at one point, was an ungainly affair, often stiff by virtue of the material and processes needed to incorporate reflectivity into the garment. However, continual development of better synthetic fabrics has resulted in high-viz garments, especially vests, being much more comfortable to wear over existing clothing. This might seem of trifling importance in comparison to the above points, but the increased wear comfort makes it far more likely for workers to wear, and continue wearing, hi-viz clothing – reducing the likelihood of accidents overall.