The skilled trades industry is an essential component of our economy, and it is particularly busy during the summer months when construction and other projects are in full swing. To the people that aren’t in these types of fields, we think about summertime as vacations and relaxation, but for those in these types of fields such as construction or heavy highway – their experience of summertime is much more labor intensive. And this time of the year always gives me a reminder on how important PPE is to the health and safety of workers.

We talk a lot through Empowering Women in Industry about how important it is to the safety of skilled trade workers to have proper and well-fitting PPE. This is a huge need in our industry and specifically for women. A lot of companies tend to lump all of their worker into the same box and only provide them with PPE that’s standard for male bodies. They do this for various reasons including to save of costs and convenience but regardless of the reason behind it, we need to do better.

Big strides have been made in recent years with brands popping up in the effort to have inclusive PPE options for all body types and they’ve highlighted the very real issue that people face that if you’re not in those types of roles, you wouldn’t necessarily know about. This being said – that education and adoption piece still has work to do at getting buy in from employers to protect their workers in a more meaningful and proactive way.

Employers are legally obligated to provide appropriate PPE to their workers and if the workers don’t feel like this is being done – they have the right to refuse to work. But I think that gives people a false sense of the worker being taken care of. Many people don’t have the option to refuse to work due to improperly fitting PPE being provided so it’s not enough to put that weight back on the worker to be responsible for speaking up and refusing to settle for what they deserve on the jobsite.

We all need to be aware of the issue and implore companies and employers to be the ones to be making these changes from the top down in order to protect their workers and place value back on the safety of all of their employees – not just the ones that fit the “norm” sizing standards. In the long run, this not only decreases the risk of accidents and injuries but it increases worker morale, productivity, and event your DEI efforts.

A few of our favorites over at Empowering Women in Industry are: Juno Jones, Embher, Dovetail, LAPCO, Torq’d, and many more awesome brands that are dedicated to functional, fashionable, and most importantly protective PPE.