FEATURE


THE NEXT STEP


Simon Ash, UK Sales Manager at HAIX, has been working in the footwear industry for more than twenty-five years. Having seen trends come and go, what could the future of safety footwear look like?


FIRST STEPS 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.


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


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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, which are manufactured in standardised sizes, the impact safety features have on overall comfort and fit means that, for safety footwear especially, sizing is less than an exact science. My work boot will not fit you in the same way it fits me, even if we are the same shoe size ‘off the shelf’, because our anatomy is entirely different, which can lead to long- term health effects and potential for injury.


There are few PPE items that are as ‘personal’ as work boots; protective headwear, eyewear, gloves and high-vis clothing can be removed at various points in a working day, but your work boots stay on from the start of a shift until the end.


The future of safety footwear, for PPE and for health and safety are closely linked, including a focus on the ‘health’ aspect in health and safety, and the ‘personal’ aspect of personal protective equipment. There are clear signs that employers and manufacturers are beginning to emphasise this aspect and address the individual needs of those wearing the PPE. Examples include the introduction of high-vis clothing designed to take into account the wearer’s religious beliefs.


THE NEXT STEPS We are beginning to see how advances in


technology, materials, manufacturing techniques and consideration for the individual needs of the wearer, are coming together to produce the next generation of work boots that address long-running concerns around conventional safety footwear.


A recurring complaint from those who wear safety footwear at work is plantar fasciitis, an acute pain in the heel caused by inflammation of the plantar fascia, which is prevalent among people who stand for long periods of time while at work, such as


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