How to reduce 'SlipUps' when selecting your work footwear!
James Abbott
Helping health, safety, facilities and procurement professionals reduce accidents at work, increasing compliance and creating happier colleagues through market leading footwear solutions!
About Slip Accidents in the UK
It’s one of our goals here at Anvil Traction to raise awareness of slips, trips and falls and the solutions available. Not just because we want to sell more shoes (which we do of course ) but because it’s a HUGE issue affecting hundreds of families each year.
In fact based on HSE information from 2019/20 (https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/kinds-of-accident.pdf) Slip’s, Trips & Falls (on same level) account for 29% of non-fatal accidents & 2% of fatal accidents in the workplace and these accidents have an incalculable cost on peoples lives.
Moreover;
These injuries don’t just cause you physical harm but effect your ability to provide for your family, your metal health, wellbeing and at worst can cost you your life.
Selecting the right footwear
Ok that's the serious bit over, lets begin by understanding where to start. Firstly is must be acknowledged that footwear isn't the only way of reducing the likelihood of a slip, trip or fall occurring, the full hierarchy of control needs to be considered when protecting yourself or your employees;
Sometimes no matter what you try, you just won't be able to get rid of all the hazards, and you probably need to do a bit of everything!
Once you've decided footwear is required, the decision on what to buy needs to be considered carefully. Comfort, Durability and other factors all need to be considered but arguably the most important is slip resistance, after all it is an item of PPE...
Moreover, it’s actually a requirement of the current European & upcoming UK standards to test all certified footwear that's safety (with toecap) or occupational (without toecap) for slip resistance. If you don't you can't make the claim!
Once testing is complete footwear is given a marking of SRA, SRB or SRC to show that it passed the minimum requirements of one or all of the tests.
What you might not know is that the rating is just the tip of the iceberg! After the test is complete the footwear is given a coefficient of friction score, this determines the level of slip resistance that footwear provides under those conditions. That information can be a valuable decision making tool.
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Most footwear companies don’t advertise their slip test results (This information is freely available on request from the manufacturer) and the truth is that test results shouldn’t be the only factor considered when choosing your footwear, any footwear should be trialled and tested in YOUR environment with YOUR hazards and contaminants to determine suitability.
BUT if slips is big concern for you or your business looking at this information might be a good place to start, after all you've got to find a way to weed through the plethora of options available in the market.
Please find further information from the HSE here -https://www.hse.gov.uk/slips/footprocure.htm
At Anvil we specialise in Traction Technology. Our specialist outsole business began life as a collaborative research programme with Sheffield University back in 2007 using a full time polymer chemist who worked exclusively on developing our outsole for 3 years+, now 14 years! What we found was that a multitude of different factors affect the slip resistant performance of footwear including but not limited to;
As a result of some of the work we’ve done our footwear achieves some of the highest results in the industry, and we've become a go to supplier for companies looking at this problem seriously, in fact some styles we’ve developed achieve results of 323% above minimum industry slip test requirements! We don't just do our own products we also collaborate with other footwear brands to help them to protect their wearers better!
We now provide footwear to suit a variety of industries; Healthcare, Food/Drink Manufacturing, Logistics and Transport, Hospitality, Front/Back of House, Facilities Management, Security, QSR the list goes on…
We’re continuously innovating and looking to add different products into our line up to match different working conditions and hazards, so watch this space, but also get in touch if we can help you with an issue you're facing!
If you want to know more, please follow our content across social channels as over the coming months we are going to have some exciting things to share!
I hope this helped!
Best regards,
James Abbott
Head of Sales - Anvil Traction
M: +44 (0)7706 349942 | E: [email protected] |