WHAT’S NEW?
THE NEXT STEP: THE FUTURE OF SAFETY FOOTWEAR
Simon Ash, UK Sales Manager at HAIX, has been working in the footwear industry for over twenty-five years. Having seen trends come and go, what could the future of safety footwear look like?
Safety footwear was born out of necessity to protect workers alongside the introduction of liability insurance and workplace safety legislation. In the UK, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 set a legal requirement for wearing protective shoes or boots in a number of industries like construction or manufacturing. The Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulation 1992 followed, mandating that, “every employer shall ensure that suitable personal protective equipment is provided to his employees who may be exposed to a risk to their health or safety while at work.”
Elements of the first protective footwear designs haven’t changed much in the intervening years, and wearers have come to expect that particular design elements come as standard. Steel toecaps, slip-resistant tread, puncture resistance and construction using hardwearing materials like rubber, leather and polyurethane – all of these now expected qualities of good PPE evolved as responses to protect wearers from workplace hazards in environments like factories and constructions sites.
20 | TOMORROW’S FM Putting the ‘personal’ in personal
protective equipment The focus when designing and developing PPE, and specifically work footwear, has rightly been on protective qualities. Legislative responsibility, threat of legal repercussion and care for employees has naturally seen designers and manufacturers prioritise the ‘first P’ to keep wearers safe at work.
This has been well noted, with one study summarising that ‘occupational footwear appears to be designed more for occupational safety at the expense of functionality and comfort.’ Safety features alter shoe characteristics, including flexibility and fit, which can directly impact worker’s comfort and can, in the long term, become ‘associated with work- related pain and injuries at the lower back, the ankle, the hallux, and the metatarsal heads.’
While the adage ‘one size fits all’ does not strictly apply to work boots, the impact safety features have on overall
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