Role of Workwears in the times of COVID-19.

When we talked about workwears conforming to norms of performance then the idea was to ensure safety at worksite for the personnel so that a maximum free movement and sense of confidence can be achieved. However, post COVID-19 world seems to have altered the sense by bit and for some by large extend.

Here are some of the points we discuss why the role of workwears has become more important and why there’s more responsibility on the manufacturers of workwear to ensure a multi-norm product to be safe and performing :

Assessment of Working Site

There’s a change in the lense to view and assess the work site from the point of view of COVID and infectious disease. The spatial arrangement on site , the movement of personnel, ventilation of HAVOC unit, segregation of workers from different shifts. These are just some of the guidelines on the assessment of the working site. Since a large industrial would have multiple department with levels of work hazards to be addressed. Now amongst all these workwears are to be designed in a way that we ensure minimal contact to physical body and the workwear must be able to provide comfortable breathing at all times when at work.

Color codes to employees

It has been noticed that industries often stick to one color one company parameter even if there are multiple departments and shifts. Now in a post COVID world this has to change NOW. We need to alert the employees of different shifts and department so that their behavior to social distancing automatically kicks in mind before anything. We need to have different color of workwears for different working groups and departments.

Multi-norm Edge

While industries have tried to remain specific to their needs to adhere to minimal norms required, this is a chance to reconsider it. There are functional fabrics which can give protection against droplets (a possible point of infection). These type of multi-norm fabric can be used as per the assessment made in the first point only. A water repellancy over and above being fire retardant can give added feature but there are some reduction in the level of performance for fire retardancy. Thus a balanced assessment is to be done without blindly following the masses.

Stop the Disposables saga.

There has grown a weird trend that industries where the disposable working gears are not required have started piling stocks of it, which has added to the costs and made the personnel working into harsh condition posed by wearing the disposables. There must not be any decision in haste and it is in these times HSEs(Health & Safey Experts) must ensure implementation of norms which gives larger benefit .