A cleaning contract gets signed and the first order goes in. Polo shirts, a box of tabards, done. Six weeks later a supervisor is filling in an accident form because someone went over on a floor they had just mopped.
The uniform is the easy part. What actually keeps a cleaning team working is a much shorter list, and most of it costs less than the tabard it usually gets ordered alongside.
The HSE is blunt about where the injuries come from. Slips and trips remain the single most common cause of major injury in UK workplaces, and cleaning is one of the jobs where the work itself creates the hazard. Musculoskeletal disorders are the most common work-related ill health reported by cleaners. Sort out footwear, gloves and kneeling, and most of the risk is gone.
Slip resistant footwear is the one line not to cheap out on
HSE guidance says it straight: even a well wrung mop leaves a thin film of water, and that is enough to create a slip risk on a smooth floor. Contamination is implicated in almost all slip accidents. Signs and cones only warn people about a hazard, they do not stop them walking into it.
So the outsole is doing more for your team than any other single purchase. Where the job needs a toe cap (cages, trolleys, wheeled bins), the spec is EN ISO 20345:2022. Slip resistance is a basic requirement in that version of the standard, tested on ceramic tile, and the old SRA, SRB and SRC codes have gone. A separate SR mark means the boot also passed the harder second slip test.
Where there is no toe cap requirement, occupational footwear to EN ISO 20347 is the correct spec. It carries O1, O2 or O3 marks instead of S marks and costs less, which is why you mostly see it as clogs and slip-ons for washroom and kitchen work. For genuinely wet jobs a non safety wellington is fine, like the Dunlop Pricemaster at £16.48.
Trainers are not a cleaning shoe. Whatever grip they had is gone after a month of chemical residue.
Gloves: buy for the chemical, not the colour of the box
HSE lists dermatitis as one of the main risks in cleaning, and the fix is unglamorous. Wear gloves for wet and chemical work, moisturise, and check hands for the early signs of itching, dryness or redness before they turn into cracked skin that keeps someone off work.
For light duties and food areas a disposable nitrile glove is enough. Our blue powder free nitrile is £6.85 for a hundred, which works out at under 7p a glove.
Anything you decant, spray or dilute needs a chemical glove with an EN ISO 374-1 rating and the chemical code letters printed under the beaker pictogram. Type A has been tested against at least six chemicals with a breakthrough time of 30 minutes or more, Type B at least three, Type C at least one. A glove can be Type A and still be hopeless against the drum in front of you, so read the letters against the safety data sheet instead of trusting the type letter on its own. We went through that marking in detail in the EN ISO 374 guide.
Working examples from the range: the Pawa PG610 Type A at £7.65, the PG620 Type B gauntlet at £8.28 with a long cuff you can fold back so liquid cannot run down the arm, and the Chem 270 PVC double dipped gauntlet at £3.20 for general wet work. Cut and abrasion ratings sit under EN 388, which is a separate question from chemical resistance.
Eye protection is the cheap item everyone forgets
COSHH requires you to assess the substances, control exposure, and provide information, instruction and training. The example HSE gives of what that looks like in practice is appropriate rubber gloves and appropriate eye protection.
If anyone on the team decants bleach, descaler or a concentrated floor stripper, they need goggles rather than spectacles. Beeswift chemical goggles are £3.06, EN 166 optical class 1, medium impact, and marked for liquid splash.
Two rules worth putting on the chemical store wall. Never mix bleach with an acidic descaler, because it releases chlorine gas. And never decant into an unlabelled bottle, however short the job.
Tabards, tunics and the colour question
The tabard survives in cleaning for good reasons. It is cheap to replace, easy to launder, and it tells a member of the public which person is staff. The Premier pocket tabard is £13.48, 65/35 polycotton twill, 68cm long, industrial laundry to 85°C and domestic to 60°C. The Warrior DV250 is £12.48 and cut longer at 74cm.
Where a tabard would catch on door handles or a trolley, a tunic with a concealed zip front is tidier, and the CHMT1 at £15.00 or the CHLT1 at £18.50 both do the job. You can see the full spread in workwear tunics.
On colour coding, the BICSc guidelines work to red, blue, green and yellow, with the golden rule of cleaning from the cleanest area towards the dirtiest. BICSc is also clear that, healthcare aside, there is no compulsory national standard for colour coding in the cleaning industry. Pick a system, write it down, train it, and pair every colour with a number or a written label, because a fair number of people are colour blind. The guidelines are aimed at cloths and mops rather than clothing, but your tabard colours can follow the same logic if you want housekeeping in one colour and washrooms in another.
And if the team works anywhere near vehicles, whether that is a car park, a loading bay or a forecourt, add EN ISO 20471 hi-vis. A hi-vis tabard is £6.27 and goes over whatever else they are wearing.
The small items that keep people off their knees
HSE names MSDs as the most common work-related ill health reported by cleaners, and machine baseboards, skirting and washroom floors are where it comes from. Foldable knee pad inserts for work trousers are £7.68 a pair.
Wet floor signs do not stop anyone, as HSE points out, so use them alongside barriers, a locked door, or cleaning one section at a time. A folding sign is £7.35.
Floor cleaner also gets dosed by eye far too often. HSE advice is to use the correct amount of the right product and give a detergent time to work on greasy floors. Overdosing leaves a residue film that is slicker than plain water. Multi-purpose hard surface cleaner is £6.40 for five litres, and the janitorial range has the rest.
For anyone in wet work all day, barrier cream before the gloves and a moisturiser after is the difference between a person who stays on the tools and a person with cracked hands. Barrier cream is £5.85 for 450ml.
What an eight person team actually costs
- Eight pairs of anti-slip occupational clogs at £17.31: £138.48
- Eight tabards at £13.48: £107.84
- Eight pairs of PG610 chemical gloves at £7.65: £61.20
- Four boxes of disposable nitrile at £6.85: £27.40
- Two pairs of chemical goggles at £3.06: £6.12
- Eight pairs of knee pad inserts at £7.68: £61.44
- Two wet floor signs at £7.35: £14.70
That lot comes to £417.18, or £52.15 a head, before embroidery or print. Set it against one lost time slip injury and the arithmetic is not close.
If you are putting kit together for a cleaning contract, one site or a mobile team, we will build the list with your logo on it and quote it properly. Call us on +44(0)1236 755544, or browse the janitorial and cleaning range and the footwear range online.
Prices shown are ex VAT and were correct at the date of writing. REF: CLEANING-WORKWEAR
