3 questions to ask about fatigue in your organization
October 2, 2024
By
Brandi Cowen
Credit: Getty Images/shironosov
Nearly half of all full-time workers in Canada report feeling fatigued at the end of a regular workday, according to a 2023 survey conducted by Research Co. Fatigue can impair reasoning, problem-solving, motor control and sensory perception – all things that help keep workers safe on the job.
“People confuse fatigue with drowsiness and sleepiness, which are not the same terms at all,” explained Mike Harnett, president of Solaris Fatigue Management, during a webinar hosted by OHS Canada on Sept. 19. “When I say the word ‘fatigue,’ I’m talking about a physiological state. We have products that are building in our body and our brain… When we have this debris building up in our brain, it impacts us by decreasing our abilities to complete tasks that are either physical in nature or mental in nature, and that, of course, is going to impair our ability to do work safely.”
Harnett explained that as this debris builds in the brain, our bodies look for ways to conserve energy. One way to do that is to divert energy away from a part of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain is the largest energy hog in the body, responsible for executive functions like reasoning and problem-solving. It also influences other parts of the brain responsible for motor control and sensory perception. That’s why performance in these areas can suffer as workers become fatigued.
Harnett explained that fatigue grows throughout the day, making us feel tired.
“By the time we reach 16 hours awake, we’re probably beginning to feel pretty sleepy, and by 17 hours we’re probably beginning to struggle to stay awake,” she said. “Ideally, if we listen to our bodies, we will realize that after 16 hours we should be going to bed and if we do go to bed – great! That’s when all of this debris in the brain… is flushed out of our system, down to our liver and out of our bodies.”
“The problem is a lot of us are awake longer than 17 hours,” Harnett added.
Here are three questions to ask to help you understand fatigue in your organization, and what you can do about it.
Are workers showing up fit for duty?
“The easiest way to find out if your employees are actually getting the recuperation that they need and are showing up fit for duty is simply to ask them,” Harnett said. That may mean conducting employee surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one conversations. “What you want to do is use questions that are science-based and then compare answers against other normative data.”
Harnett said it’s important to inquire about sleep quantity, differences in sleep on a day shift versus a night shift, sleep quality, and what, if any sleep or alertness aids workers are using to help them fall asleep or stay awake when needed.
She also recommends building in a screener that can help determine if employees may have undiagnosed sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea.
“In one survey that we issued, we found that six per cent of workers had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea, but we found another 45 per cent who were potentially undiagnosed, compared to the national average of 26 per cent,” Harnett shared. “So, programs were developed around wellness and these individuals were given sleep screens they could take to their doctors. Now they’re getting proper treatment for their conditions.”
Do supervisors know what to do if a worker is not fit for duty?
Having clear procedures in place to deal with fatigued workers can help avoid situations of favouritism, where a supervisor sends an employee they like for a nap during their shift, while a less favoured employee is disciplined.
Harnett also stressed that there’s a difference between an employee who reports to work in a fatigued state once in a while – say after a rough night with a screaming baby or a sick child – and one who shows up in a fatigued state day after day.
“How you handle these situations is very different,” she said. “But the one thing that is consistent – it needs to be non-punitive.”
After all, that perpetually fatigued worker may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder, or some other medical condition. Don’t assume their fatigue is simply a matter of lifestyle choices.
Are there measures in place to protect against fatigue-related errors?
“I want to say this very clearly: human error is not a cause of anything going wrong,” Harnett said. “Human error is never a cause; it’s a symptom.”
“When employees start making errors at the work site, you want to track these because you want to put in error-proofing to prevent those errors from occurring and minimize the impact,” she added.
Harnett pointed to handovers at a shift change as a prime time for fatigue-related errors to occur, as the outgoing workers are tired and may be in a hurry to get out the door, while the incoming workers may not be fully awake yet. These circumstances create space for miscommunication and important information can fall through the cracks. Putting measures in place to ensure clear communication between shifts is one way to error-proof the shift change process.
“We need to recognize that we’re never going to eradicate fatigue from showing up at the worksite,” Harnett said. “Fatigue is in us. It’s a social issue; it’s an epidemic.”
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