Bendinger Neckwear \ What's New The Top Five Benefits of Corporate Uniforms
Whether or not a company uses uniforms is an important question for any business owner. The decision can be daunting – Will customers like seeing uniforms? Will employees like wearing uniforms? How will uniforms impact productivity? How will uniforms impact sales?
We’re here to put all debate on this issue to rest, once and for all: Uniforms are a good thing. Uniforms improve customer experiences. Uniforms improve employee experiences. And uniforms translate to increased sales. There are far too many great reasons to list, but here are five of the most important benefits of corporate uniforms:
1. Team Building
What we wear impacts how we feel. And when employees wear uniforms, they feel like a part of something larger than themselves. Employees wearing uniforms feel professional and ready to work.
Dressing uniformly also puts everyone on a more equal footing, so as soon as you show up to work, you’re part of the team – deserving of as much trust, responsibility, and respect as any other team member. This fosters a collaborative environment where employees help one another and are invested in each other’s growth.
Uniforms that are thoughtful, tasteful, and flattering give employees a sense of pride while reminding them of their primary purpose in the workplace throughout the day. That’s why it’s always a good idea to invest up front in doing uniforms right.
2. Employee Visibility
Corporate environments can get pretty busy and crowded (we hope!), and when that happens, distinguishing employees from everyone else can get difficult. Even when a store or workplace isn’t crowded, if employees aren’t wearing any kind of distinguishing clothing, a customer’s initial impression of the environment can get a bit muddled.
Uniforms do wonders to alleviate this issue. A distinctive uniform sets employees apart from customers in a clear and intuitive way, so customers can navigate the environment with confidence and ease – the feelings that will bring them back to you time and time again.
3. Branding
Distinctive uniforms provide another major benefit that goes beyond any single experience or encounter: they build your brand. A uniform can tie customers’ experiences of your brand together. Through even the most subtle visual cues in the uniform, like color or a logo, consistent elements of your brand’s visual identity that span advertisements, web pages, and marketing material extend into actual human interactions. This cohesion gives both customers and employees the important sense that they’re in the right place.
Brand building is another reason to invest in a thoughtful and well-made uniform. If employees like what they’re wearing, they won’t just be happier wearing the uniform in the store – they might even wear their uniforms outside the store. When employees feel comfortable and confident wearing their uniforms on their way to and from work, that many more people get exposed to your brand.
4. Customer Experience
Today’s customers look for more than just a product. Now more than ever, as consumers do more and more shopping online, brick and mortar locations are about having an experience. That’s what customers look for. It’s what keeps them coming back. And it’s what companies need to provide in order to remain competitive.
Excellent customer experiences are what all of the above benefits add up to. When the brand is recognizable and the customer feels at home from the minute they walk in the door, when employees are easy to identify instantly and the process of finding them is seamless, when those employees look and act confident, professional, knowledgeable, and helpful, supporting each other as a team – that’s the kind of experience that sets a company apart and keeps customers engaged with your brand. That’s the true power of corporate uniforms.
5. Safety
As we’ve seen above, uniforms help employees do their best work while looking sharp, and they create great customer experiences that drive sales. But they also perform a much more fundamental function that makes them indispensable: Uniforms make the workplace safer.
Creating custom uniforms for your team allows you to cater what your employees wear to the specific safety concerns of your work environment. For manufacturing, mining, or food processing, this makes uniforms a no-brainer. But every work environment has its own safety concerns, and crafting team uniforms that help minimize employee injuries is always the right thing to do.
So there you have it. Uniforms benefit employees and employers. They improve customer experiences. And they drive sales. There’s just no good reason not to use them.
But remember: in order to reap these benefits from your uniforms, the uniforms themselves have to be designed and crafted with attention and care. And they have to look good.