Work shoes are indispensable for your employees. They protect feet from all sorts of dangers in the workplace and thus prevent injuries. However, they can also cause sore or tired feet.
Luckily, you can prevent painful feet caused by work shoes. How? Read all about it in this blog.
Why is it important t owear well-fitting work shoes?
You wear work shoes for at least 40 hours a week. Shoes of poor quality or that don’t fit well cause painful feet after work. But you can also get back and neck pains from them. The wrong shoes can even lead to incapacity for work. And that leads to great costs for the company.
Therefore, always choose the right, well-fitting work shoe for each employee. Because prevention is important both for your company and your employees. When choosing the fit of your work shoes, pay attention to:
- the length measurement
- the width measurement
- the width of the ball
One size fits all thus does not apply to work shoes.
Choose the right work shoes
You can prevent painful feet at the end of a workday and other problems by considering the comfort and your personal characteristics.
The comfort of your shoes
Do the work shoes fit correctly, and are they not too heavy? Does the material breathe so that the wearer’s feet remain dry? Do the shoes adequately absorb shocks when walking?
Comfortable shoes help prevent painful feet after work.
Personal characteristics
No foot is the same. Therefore, when choosing work shoes, pay careful attention to the width of the foot and the height of the instep.
Also, take complaints such as hammertoes, sore heels and diabetes into account.
Don't forget the risks
Of course, a safety shoe must still provide the right level of protection against risks in the workplace. Think about penetration of the sole, falling objects or heat. And if your employees walk on a slippery or wet floor, then the work shoes must have extra protection against slipping.
You can usually find a suitable work shoe in the manufacturer’s standard range. They have a broad range of work shoes in different widths.
Measuring work shoes
During a personal consultation, we pay attention to the fitting of work shoes for employees with foot complaints. In this way, your people can test different models in different sizes.
This service solves the most serious foot problems in 90% of cases.
Ask for a personal consultation
Orthopaedic adjustments
Sometimes there isn’t a suitable work shoe that can completely solve the problem. In that case, an orthopaedic adjustment is necessary.
This can be in the form of support insoles, but it is also possible to have the work shoes orthopaedically adjusted. Then, for example, the heel or the instep is raised.
Support insoles
For the fitting of support insoles or the adjustment of safety shoes, your employee needs a prescription from the work doctor.
When you need support, never use your personal support soles. Your work shoes may no longer be antistatic and therefore less safe.
Always choose certified support insoles. These are insoles from the same manufacturer that you put in your work shoes, but they comply with EU regulations and maintain safety.
Certified support soles from vandeputte
Vandeputte works together with reliable partners for certified support insoles. They manufacture certified support insoles for your employees for the following brands:
- Elten
- Emma
- Uvex
Would you like to know more about support insoles or custom-made shoes?
Custom-made work shoes
Support insoles or orthopaedic adjustments can almost always make a work shoe fit. In very extreme cases, it does not work.
In that case, we will have a work shoe made especially for your employee. The work shoe is then built from scratch according to the recommendations of the work doctor or the orthopaedic specialist.
In doing so, we always take the high standards of work shoes into account.
Naturally, a custom-made work shoe for the employee has a high price tag.
