Protective footwear is defined as a type of work gear that is designed to protect the feet from a wide range of accidents and prevent hazardous workplace injuries. Compression, impact and puncture wounds are some of the most common as well as slips, trips and falls. Equipping your team with high-quality protective safety gear can go a long way to reducing the risk of workplace incidents, whatever your industry.
In this article, we will look at four reasons why protective footwear may become obligatory in more and more industries in the future and how Shoes For Crews can help support your company if you are looking to upgrade your current footwear.
1. Protective footwear as a tool
It is highly likely that you and your employees view protective footwear as a tool. Safety footwear helps reduce the impact of workplace accidents can have on business by providing a barrier between your employees and their working environment.
Our protective footwear styles offer excellent features to help keep your teams safe all day long. With our TripGuard feature, your employees can move safely across wet or oily floors as well as other types of surfaces, thanks to its slight curvature at the toe and narrow tread pattern. This technology can significantly reduce the risk of slips and falls regardless of the work environment.
Speaking of innovative technology, our slip-resistant outsoles are durable, anti-clog and offer the best protection against the risk of developing musculoskeletal injuries or disorders caused by prolonged standing or fixed positions. Moreover, for some industries, a composite toe cap can ensure maximum safety against any sharp or heavy objects your staff encounters and reduce their risk of injuring their legs, knees or feet.
2. Protective footwear for accident and injury prevention
We understand that a lot of preparation goes into preventing accidents, especially in the manufacturing, construction, facilities, and logistics industries. However, any type of incident can still catch even the most prepared employer off guard.
A workplace accident is always unexpected and unwelcome as well as causing sudden disruption to work processes. Moreover, this has the potential to affect your employees while they are working at your company. Protective footwear is subject to certain ISO standards and the main requirement is to ensure the safety of the feet and legs while worn.
As more companies implement safety and training initiatives, protective footwear will need to meet stringent safety standards, including those outlined in the update to EN ISO 20344:2021 standard. Adherence to these standards in training programmes can save workers’ lives and employers valuable time and resources.
3. Sustainable protective footwear production
Additionally, workers from both older and younger generations are becoming more environmentally conscious. This has led to a change in the way they want footwear to be made as they are demanding more sustainable practices be implemented. On one hand, companies are also becoming increasingly aware of their environmental responsibilities; on the other, we at Shoes For Crews are also committed to achieving this goal through the manufacturing of our work shoes. We believe that the use of protective footwear can help companies improve their level of social responsibility.
We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint. To demonstrate this commitment, we have revamped our production processes by relocating our manufacturing centres to mainland Europe and are now using repurposed materials to create our linings and slip-resistant outsoles.
Here are a few of the different types of sustainable materials we are using to manufacture our protective footwear styles:
- Recycled EVA (from discarded flip-flops and industrial production waste to make our slip-resistant outsoles)
- Recycled PET bottles (converted to granulate to manufacture new linings)
- Recycled Polyurethane (to be used for our uppers, with alternatives to leather being tested)
