## 1 Introduction  
The human foot serves as the point of contact between the body and the environmental terrain, making proper function crucial for efficient somatosensory and proprioceptive feedback for the central nervous system (CNS). With footwear serving as the connecting link, its interaction between the environment and the foot plays an important role in maintaining postural stability without sustaining a fall in static and dynamic conditions and having a safe and efficient gait pattern with minimal muscle activity and energy expenditure. While research is abundant regarding athletic footwear design intended to improve performance, there is limited research on occupational footwear design's effects on postural stability. Therefore, occupational footwear design safety features may not provide optimal physiological and biomechanical functions in the workplace. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), injuries due to slips, trips, and falls are one of the leading causes of time away from work, placing construction workers at the top of the list at 46.1%. Moreover, more than one in five workplace deaths occurred in construction environments, with over one-third due to slips and trips [1]. While a fatal fall causes catastrophic effects on the worker's family and the workplace, the effects of non-fatal falls could be detrimental as well. Depending on the severity, such falls could cause permanent disability, loss of earning potential, and poor quality of life to the employee, while decreasing productivity and increasing financial loss to the employer [2]. These fall-related injuries are due to inefficient postural control strategies in response to both intrinsic and extrinsic perturbations that cause a loss of balance [3]. Some intrinsic factors that impact postural stability include deficits in postural control feedback (visual, vestibular, proprioception), weakness, fatigue, cognitive awareness, etc. Furthermore, several extrinsic factors can disturb the environment to result in a fall, including lighting, the walking surface, temperature, carrying asymmetric loading, and a less studied factor, footwear. Furthermore, current safety regulations on occupational footwear design, along with the commonly occurring inappropriate selection of footwear for a specific task, could result in detrimental effects on postural stability and balance. Occupational footwear that are designed to improve postural stability while also abiding by safety standards can help improve postural stability, promote efficient locomotion, and reduce the risk of falls in the workplace. Some specific design features that have been reported to affect postural control and locomotion include, but are not limited to, sole thickness, midsole hardness, sole/heel height, heel-to-toe drop, boot shaft height, sole grove pattern, presence of lacing, mass, and material. These design features and their impact on postural control and locomotion being assessed through biomechanical and physiological variables are critical in designing better occupational footwear. Occupational footwear is designed for safety as the primary focus and the addition of hazardous occupational environments can easily impact an individual's postural control and locomotion. As the maintenance of dynamic balance is considered more challenging than static [4], the resulting postural instabilities could be more pronounced during gait/locomotion. While static work tasks are not uncommon in occupational settings, the majority of the tasks in ergonomic settings are dynamic in nature. Hence, the workers are at high risk of falling, especially the occupational categories such as construction workers, firefighters, military personnel, and manual laborers. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to elaborate on the effects footwear design features on postural stability from both a biomechanical and physiological perspective.