Safety footwear may carry the relevant standards markings and still vary substantially in the grip it provides on wet or contaminated floors. For employers issuing several different footwear styles, that raises a simple question: which products are actually providing the best protection against slips?

At HSM Live Scotland, Neospire will demonstrate SoleXT, a whole-shoe slip test system developed to reveal meaningful differences between footwear under controlled conditions. Instead of relying only on a compliance result, footwear can be progressively challenged to establish where grip is lost.

Neospire’s Footwear Slip-Risk Audit gives employers an independent benchmark of commonly issued or permitted footwear styles. The results help safety and procurement teams identify weaker-performing products for potential de-selection, recognise stronger alternatives and put better evidence behind future purchasing decisions.

Neospire was founded by Kevin Hallas, former Health and Safety Executive technical lead for falls prevention, with more than 20 years’ experience in workplace injury prevention and pedestrian slip risk. His work at HSE included a key role in developing the HSE GRIP footwear rating scheme.

The value of better footwear selection has also been demonstrated in the workplace. The NIHR-funded SSHeW randomised trial involving 4,553 NHS employees found that providing highly slip-resistant 5-star GRIP footwear reduced the workplace slip rate by 63% compared with employees continuing to wear their usual footwear.

Testing cannot predict every individual slip: floors, contamination, tasks and human behaviour all matter. But it can show whether the footwear itself is helping to control the risk or is the weak link in the footwear-floor combination.

See SoleXT in action at HSM Live Scotland and find out how well your safety footwear really grips.

For more information, visit www.neospire.ltd