Many people entering the workplace for the first time after school or college, or returning to work after a break, are finding it difficult to master buying and wearing a work wardrobe. It’s particularly tough when you have a limited budget, if, say you’re in your first job and juggling student debt and the need to pay for food, rent and other unavoidable bills.

Larger firms are giving advice and even seminars to new staff to help them through the first few difficult months but if you don’t work for a company that’s going to train you to buy the right gear, here are some tips to help.

•    Try to develop a sense of your new workplace before making an investment in workwear.  You can do this by wandering past the building at lunchtime and seeing what people are wearing as they come out, or by Googling a big firm on the internet to see what the people in news stories and on the company website pages are wearing. That stops you buying garments that are too casual, like vests for the office, or too formal, like shirts for the building site, and that are therefore never worn.
•    Get a friend to come and help you sort your current clothing out before you buy, often a fresh pair of eyes can show you how to use items you’ve barely or never worn, or shows you could sell barely worn and unwanted garments to help fund your new purchases.
•    When buying casual, check the washing labels as it can be annoying to have to use special washing machine programmes or even hand-wash work clothing.
•    Set and budget and buy online. Online retailers often provide discounts for multiple purchases so, for example, you can buy six polo-shirts and get one free, or get free delivery which allows you to buy another shirt! They don’t do that on the high street.

IFF Research claims that British business will struggle to embed volunteering as part of the workplace, following the discovery that while 38% of those who replied said their employer encouraged or allow volunteering during work hours, only 7% of employees undertook such volunteering. 13% of responders said that their employer forbade or discouraged volunteering on work time. It suggests, according to the research company, that while a significant minority across the UK (27% of workers interviewed) had undertaken volunteering while in their current employment, only one in 14 of them had done so on paid time.

IFF suggests that motivating employees to volunteer on company time will give companies a reputation for good corporate social responsibility, provide for a more rounded workforce, and help create the volunteering culture the government feels essential to the Big Society.

An example might be the development of the Pet Society shop in Paddington. A coincidence led to an elderly woman visiting the shop asking for help because her recently deceased dead husband’s dog was pining, at the time an elderly man whose dog had died was browsing the shelves. It seemed only logical for them to arrange for the man to exercise the dog and that led to a volunteer run shop selling pet food, clothing and accessories plus hosting a fortnightly clinic with an advisor from the Dogs Trust to do health checks on pets.

Entirely volunteer staffed, the shop provides more than dog support – volunteers have been able to develop new skills that will help them get jobs. Wearing a uniform, using the till, developing relationships and offering advice are all key factors that allow individuals to ease back into working life after a period of unemployment, looking after children or relatives at home, or illness.

In the USA, we’re constantly told, they are facing a workplace epidemic of obesity costing $168 billion every year – which is 17% of all medical bills in the States.

Dealing with this isn’t easy, especially for employers, and in the UK, large companies are looking to their US counterparts to see how they can best manage the issues surrounding workplace obesity and welfare.

It seems that Americans may be recognising that they need to lose weight and that many are focusing on ways to get slimmer and fitter at work. According to a survey of nearly 6000 workers, 18% claimed they had lost weight at work in 2011 compared to 16% in 2010. But 43% admitted that they had gained weight in their current job.

Reasons for this increase include comfort eating as a result of the increased stress of a recession; longer work hours leading to more time spent seated at work and a tendency to buy the cheaper (and therefore less healthy) options in work canteens and from fast foot restaurants.

28% of American employers say they provide gym classes or gym membership as an employment benefit and around half of those say that they provide places for people to change into sportswear or casual clothing so they can take part in classes or even go for a jog in their lunch break.

But around half of the companies also say that they are concerned about the additional costs of larger workers, ranging from extra time off sick through to having specially made clothing for those who exceed even the XXXL size in which many items of workplace clothing are now made.

There are some concerns in the USA about the role of uniform clothing in spreading disease in hospitals. The item of concern is scrubs, the overall style clothing worn by nurses and support workers in healthcare and the fear is that without proper guidelines, staff may spread dangerous bacteria like Clostridium difficile and MRSA.
The problem may arise when people wear their uniforms outside of hospital settings – such as on their way to and from work. This would permit outside infections to travel into a hospital setting on the clothing but also give these transmittable conditions the chance to leave the hospital and contaminate the outside world.

Many institutions insist that people do not travel to work in their uniform clothing and leave it behind when they depart so it can be specially laundered to destroy any bacteria, but some do not and this is what is worrying health specialists.

Prince William had a different concern when choosing the uniform to wear to his wedding: he didn’t want to be suffering from heat-stroke! The tailor who made his uniform says that William ‘knew all the cameras and lights would make it very hot in the Abbey’ and they worked together to ‘get the look he wanted while using material to absorb the heat and make sure he didn’t pass out in front of two billion people across the world.’

In designing the outfits, which were hand-made, a special pocket was included to hold the ring so that Prince Harry couldn’t lose it!

While thousands of items of clothing in a Huddersfield warehouse have been destroyed by fire, it may not all be bad news. The fire on Saturday in an Oxfam warehouse was so intense that a structural engineer was called in to advise the fire fighters on the risk of building collapse. It took fire crews eight hours to bring the blaze under control and thousands of tonnes of clothing and other textiles donated by the public have been destroyed. The warehouse is run by Oxfam Wastesaver, the arm of the charity that grades the donations received to be sold in the UK, exported as second-hand clothing, or recycled.

But tonnes of second-hand clothing delivered to Miyagi Prefecture, one of the areas hardest hit by the Japanese earthquake, have been left uncollected and are now being destroyed. Not only clothing but blankets and nappies are being disposed of by the authorities who are struggling to distribute goods to the disaster-hit zones. The unwanted donations include wrong-sized clothing, garments that are not appropriate to the climate in the area and textiles that are too old or worn out to be useful The problem seems to affect around 80% of charity donations in some areas, and is often the result of boxes being sent by church or school groups – often sending uniforms and work clothes – rather than by charities which understand the need for sensible, long-lasting clothing.

Also, many Japanese not affected by the quake and tsunami have chosen to give large amounts of clothing to those who are, so donations that have familiar labels and sizes are being preferred to foreign garments. Now many cities are listing the items they still need on municipal websites to prevent unwanted items being sent. Many people still need tinned foods, bags and toiletries.

In a recent study published by researchers at Tilburg University in Holland, it emerged that a highly recognisable designer brand like Lacoste or Yves St Laurent has a positive effect on employers, co-workers and friends, while logos for cheap brands don’t have the same positive effect. So far, research hasn’t shown whether cheap brands actually harm one’s prospects.

Behavioural scientists used photographs to examine peoples’ responses to logos. It was discovered that a high end brand logo, prominently displayed, could convince the viewer that the wearer in the photograph was richer or more influential.

And in real life, the same result held true. Two teams were sent out to raise money for charity – one team wore ordinary polo shirts, the other bore the Lacoste brand. By the end of the evening, the Lacoste team had collected slightly more money than the other one. Over a year, the researchers say, they would have raised enough money to pay for 25 heart transplants just by wearing the branded tops. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the cost of providing charity volunteers with top-end clothing!

The research didn’t explore any of the fake logos that mimic the famous brands, but they plan a follow up study which may include that question.

Clothing Thieves Charged

Two Lithuanian nationals have been charged in South Wales with the theft of 50,000 charity clothing bags that had been left out for doorstep connection. The bags were found on an industrial estate in Cardiff after an anonymous tip-off and police say that the thefts were clearly the work of an organised gang.

There were enough bags to completely fill six shipping containers and they appear to have been within days of being shipped to an eastern European country and sold. A spokesman for the police said that the public may have been targeted with fake collecting bags to obtain such a huge haul of popular clothing and that people should, ‘keep giving vital help to charities, but give with care and check your donation is going to those in need.’

Bieber and Osbourne donate clothing for charity

British fans of the teen idol Justin Bieber have been bidding on the space suit he wore in a Super Bowl advert that s being auctioned in the USA. The suit, alongside one worn by rock legend Ozzy Osbourne in the same ad, is expected to raise more than £2,500 while the Osbourne garment is currently being bid for at just £1,500.  The garments are being auctioned on eBay.com to raise funds for the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, USA.

Bidding ends at midnight today, USA time, and when Sharon Osbourne revealed them on her American show The Talk in February she claimed that they ‘…cost $30,000 each. Justin was sweating all day, so [his is] covered in his sweat.’

In a Grinch-like outbreak of unpleasantness, doorstep charity bags containing clothing are being looted by criminals who are then selling their haul abroad. It’s believed this activity could be costing some of the UK’s biggest charities millions of pounds.

Most of the looting is being carried out by organised crime gangs from Eastern Europe, police say, and they are breaking into clothing banks as well as raiding doorsteps, driven by the threefold increase in value for second-hand clothing – especially winter wear. It’s a risk many thieves consider well worth it as a clothes bank usually contains textiles worth up to £150, while a doorstep bag with one designer or vintage item inside can be worth £70.

The British Heart Foundation said bogus doorstep collections will cost the charity £3 million this year – a figure which could double in 2012. Some gangs are using children to climb into the clothing banks and throw the clothes out, while others are cutting through the restraining bolts and loading the banks onto lorries in the middle of the night. More sophisticated scams include bogus doorstep appeals, sometimes with a fake charity appeal but sometimes using a real charity’s name and logo but with the bags being collected by the gang.

Big charities, including Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation, are meeting the Civil Society minister and senior police officials to discuss the problem this week. One solution being proposed is workplace clothing banks, which could be put in secure car parks or reception areas, allowing staff in an organisation to make clothing donations to an agreed charity and offering some security to the deposited items.

Legally, either an employee or his or her employer may take the responsibility for specialist work clothing, but where the employee bears the cost of upkeep of tools or pays for special clothing necessary for their work, they are entitled to a tax deduction for the expenditure incurred.

In virtually all workplaces, and almost all trades, flat rate expense deductions are agreed between the trade union negotiating for their members, and HMRC and this deduction is given as part of the tax code for the employee, without HMRC enquiring as to the actual expenditure.  However, where an employer provides the items required, or pays for them perhaps through a clothing allowance, no deduction is available to the employee and where the employer makes partial provision – say in offering knee pads for carpet fitters but not providing work gloves, the actual rate of deduction may be reduced accordingly.

In our cash-strapped days, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you have been getting a flat rate deduction it may be worth checking what you actually spend on work specific clothing because if your expense exceeds the deduction you could be entitled to a bit of a tax rebate.

Surrey County Council has gone a step further this year by removing the clothing allowances for the Council’s Chairman (£3,000) and Vice-Chairman (£363) entirely. This means that both media-acceptable smart suits and casual clothing suitable for getting involved in muckier work such as helping out serving school dinners or inspecting hospital boilers (which seem to be Council Chairman type activities these days) must be purchased by the post holder themselves.

In Nottingham the City Council has finished a consultation into school clothing allowances. As one of fewer than 43% of councils still offering a discretionary clothing allowance for pupils from low income families, the council understands the importance of the scheme but has decided to reduce payment levels. The scheme is now intended to allow parents to purchase basic school uniform items, namely a shirt, jumper and skirt or trousers.

The Get It Out for Cardiff campaign has linked university students, the city council, charities and local businesses to locate, sort and re-purpose tonnes of unwanted items

The campaign began with a series of ‘green zones’ established across the city and at each of the city’s 21 university halls of residence as donation points.

Food, clothing, electrical items and bric-a-brac were donated meaning that a tonne of food was given to the charity FareShare for redistribution to homeless people and poorer families, three tonnes of clothing was donated to the Salvation Army.

On 29 September, as part of the Freshers’ festival, new and returning students will be able to buy some of the donated electrical items and kitchen equipment to kit out their digs, and the proceeds raised by this will be used to keep the campaign running through the academic year so that students learn how to recycle, repurpose and revamp items and to use up leftover food so they live better within their budgets. It’s all part of the larger Keep Cardiff Tidy campaign which aims to link local businesses, the students and other parts of society to help maintain Cardiff’s infrastructure while teaching good habits on environmental management.

Local businesses donated goods such as damaged equipment, wholesale clothing or uncollected dry cleaned garments as well as giving space and support to the campaign. The Managing Director of Cardiff Self Storage said that, ‘… Cardiff Self Storage was enthusiastic to contribute towards such a worthwhile cause. The benefits of helping the student population of Cardiff whilst also supporting local communities and charities was key to our involvement. It is great to see that our storage units have provided the flexible short-term storage solution for the items that have been successfully collected and recycled.’

Some of the donated clothing has been given away, while other items will be auctioned or redesigned by fashion students and sold to raise funds for charity.