Work Footwear: A Beginner's Guide to Buying

Work Footwear: A Beginner's Guide to Buying 

In a lifetime, a person travels, on average, a distance longer than four times around the equator. The weight of the entire body is carried by the feet, so choosing the proper footwear is crucial. We can find many manufacturers and providers of work footwear on the market. So deciding which type of footwear is right for your line of work can be a big problem. To ease the buying of work boots in a world of marketing jargon, acronyms, standards, safety classes and classifications, we've put together this beginner's buying guide so you can make the right decision.

The employer must provide workers with personal protective equipment free of charge

Based on the Act on Safety and Health at Work - Rules on Personal Protective Equipment Used by Workers at Work, page 13467, published in the Official Gazette, employers must provide personal protective equipment to employees who may be exposed to a risk to their health and safety. This means employers must provide workers with work shoes and other personal protective equipment free of charge. While this is excellent news for employees, it can mean a lot of headaches if you don't know exactly what you should buy and what you need for your job.

Learn about work footwear standards

When buying work shoes, only these must provide complete safety. Therefore, it is essential to understand the various standards used to describe safety shoes. In the Slovenian market, this generally means looking at the European test standards written in EN ISO 20344:2011.

EN ISO 20345:2011

EN ISO 20345:2011 is the European standard for safety footwear, which ensures that safety shoes, work shoes, and sandals meet the requirements and standards with a protective cap resistant to impacts of up to 200 joules (equivalent to a 20 kg dropped weight ) and a compression test of 15 KN (equivalent to 1.5 tonnes if gravity is taken into account).

EN ISO 20346:2004

EN ISO 20346:2004 is the European standard for safety footwear, which ensures that safety shoes, work shoes and sandals meet the requirements and standards, where this is lower, namely 100 joules of impact resistance and a 10 KN compression test.

EN ISO 20347:2004

Work footwear with different types of protection available

Many models of work footwear are available to modern customers, and the easiest way to explain the differences is to divide footwear into work shoes and safety shoes. The most significant difference is in the protective cap that protects the fingers. The cap can be made of steel, aluminum or composite material. Work shoes do not have caps, but safety shoes do! Work shoes are used by health workers, police officers, soldiers, in the kitchen and the Habeco industry. Work shoes are divided into low-work shoes and high-work shoes. Safety shoes have a cap, and safety shoes are also divided into low safety shoes and high safety shoes, and they are used against mechanical, electrical, chemical and thermal influences.

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Manual of markings for work footwear

When buying work shoes, you will see many abbreviations that describe their characteristics. The list below describes the most common abbreviations you will come across and what they mean.

Handbook of safety classes for work footwear

Standards for non-slip footwear

Browse safety shoes with cap