Posted By Karine Sophie Mathurin Hi Veronica, I assume that the safety shoes are required following the findings of a risk assessment. It is therefore a reasonable requirement. I had a similar issue where our guys were complaining about their safety shoes being uncomfortable. I suggested for each employee to purchase the type of safety shoes they considered to be suitable for their job. The budget allocated to safety footwear per employee was similar to the shoes they were currently wearing; and we haven't had any complains since. Kind regards Karine

Posted By Steve IOM Veronica Just a thought, when you go shopping to Tescos [or whatever] do you wear safety shoes whilst parking your car? Just wondered what the rational was for trying to make them wear safety shoes!

Posted By A Campbell I suppose the weight of the argument is presuming that this is the only task carried out by the attendants... e.g. to park cars? Better to know the full picture before evaluating the risk... and cost effectiveness of issuing & enforcing the wearing of safety shoes!

Posted By veronica Thanks Everyone for thoughts No they park some cars , other times they direct drivers in and out of bays . There is also alot of other traffic (taxis ambulances private cars , couriers ) stopping to drop or pick people up where they are working The layout etc does need addessing and is planned as part of a bigger scheme , but will not alter overnight. Thats why I was looking to do as much as possible for the moment

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Veronica Arguing about shoes, or other 'reasonable' controls of risks, is often an indirect, inarticulate way of coping with stress and fatigue. An alternative way of gaining co-operation may be to combine pressure with options they appreciate for improving how they can manage what they experience as stress,

Posted By Lloyd Cole Id say that driving other peoples cars with safety shoes/boots on is a greater risk than not wearing safety footwear. I drive a Citroen C8 (sad) but the pedals are very close, and boots dont fit in the gaps. If your employees crash a motor,because the brake pedal got confused with the accelerator whos going to point the finger.....

Posted By Berty Veronica Does the company have a policy with regard to dress? & if so, why are you trying to force them to comply when it sounds, in the first instance, to be a line management problem. Does the company enforce other policies with any kind of robust-ness. I think if you have sufficient budget for them to go choose their own footwear then you're halfway their. The problem I encountered some years back is staff at the construction workshop wearing trainer type safety shoes & the students continually citing the tutors has not wearing theirs, which of course they were. Upshot being if they are safety shoes/boots, make sure they look like them & not trendy hiking boots. (sorry for being so long winded) regards & good luck, been there, done that.

Posted By Benny What was the rationale for the decision...how may incidents have there been? What injuries were sustained? What are you trying to protect? If it is their feet being run over, what about the rest of their bodies and why are they standing so close to the vehicles in the first place to allow their feet to be run over. Safety shoes are not going to stop someone getting run over. There is the risk of treading on things in car parks and trip/slip hazards however would safety shoes mitigate these or would sensible shoes mitigate this. This leads to what is sensible..closed in shoes perhaps. In my experience, I would be inclined to think that a safety vest would be required at minimum to alert drivers of their presence and would be easy to justify but safety shoes, maybe not under health and safety grounds. Not withstanding, if you make it a health and safety policy, and this has been agreed to by the safety committee and signed off by the Boss, then they must adhere to it. Just my opinion.

Posted By keith1983 Have you also considered that the presence of toe caps in safety footwear may be more of a danger than a control measure. Depending on the type of shoes/toe caps specified it may be the case that upon being run over they will fold over and chop off all of the wearers toes where as it may have been a less serious crush injury if they were wearing normal shoes?