Safety First

The main thing to always bear in mind is, your safety always comes first. If you are working in freezing conditions, it’s important to assess your surroundings and ask yourself ‘am I safe to carry on’.

If you deem your conditions safe to work in, continually assess the severity of hazards surrounding you throughout the day to ensure your safety. You must always consider if you believe you are likely to have an accident if you continue to work.

If you have any doubts at all about your, or your colleague’s safety while working, stop immediately and resume working when the conditions have improved at a later date. It can be really tempting to try and finish a job in poor conditions if you’re close to finishing for the day, but it’s better to consider your safety before anything else and finish the job safely the next day.

An accident will cost you more time and money than finishing a job a day later than you planned because of hazardous conditions.

Assess Your Working Site For Hazards

When the cold sets in it’s important to take extra care around the site you are working on. Things that may not have previously been a hazard, may now be extremely dangerous in the cold and wet conditions.

For example, if water spilled in cold conditions, it could freeze quickly and become a slip hazard. Simply clearing up any spillages whilst working will make your working environment much safer.

Consider Changing Your Schedule 

With the daylight hours being shorter in the winter months, it is worth considering starting at an earlier time than usual to ensure you can complete outdoor work before nightfall.

A top tip for working over winter, is to complete as much outside work as possible before the cold really sets in come January. During those cold months, you could consider doing all indoor work you need to complete.

It is also important to consider changing your usual time estimates for jobs over winter. With darkness drawing in earlier than usual, your working day can be cut a few hours shorter than it would in the summer months.

Couple this with bad weather and freezing conditions, and you’ll realise the amount of time it will take to complete a project can be much longer than you first anticipated.

Dress Appropriately 

During winter it can be easy to ditch the personal protective equipment in favour of wrapping up warm. This can be dangerous and shouldn’t be done, if your PPE doesn’t fit because of layering up, ensure you have some larger sizes of PPE avaliable to keep you safe at all times.

Ensuring you have the appropriate attire when working in cold conditions is very important.

Having good quality fleeces and thermals when temperatures plummet available for you and your colleagues is important and helps to prevent your workforce falling ill over the winter months.

Wearing high visibility vests when working in the hours close to darkness helps keep you safe when working outside, as passers-by are more likely to see you in the dark.

Having high quality work boots with good grip on the tread is vital when winter sets in. Along with this, wearing pair of anti-slip gloves will also ensure that you don’t lose your grip in wet or icy conditions.

Here at Hart Wholesale, we understand the importance of keeping you as safe as possible when you are working. We can provide high quality safety equipment to ensure that you can work happily and safely in any given work environment at all time of the year.

If you would like any more information in relation to the products we offer, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Simply call us today on 01702 614044 and one of our incredibly friendly members of staff will be more than happy to help.