Fatigue– Safety Management Approach

Fatigue management saves lives, whether you are an employee or manager, read on to understand what you need to know about managing fatigue.

 

Why are we doing this?

Fatigue is a specific safety hazard and should be a part of the risk and safety management of an organisation. Something even individuals need to be aware of and we all need to take seriously. It’s not just being a bit tired onsite. It can adversely affect your safety, leads to errors, poor long-term health and increase the incidents and injuries onsite. Particular attention to those organisations and staff that:

 

Operating fixed or mobile plant, including driving vehicles 

Undertaking critical tasks that require a high level of concentration 

Night or shift work when a person would ordinarily be sleeping

 

As a worker:

You have a duty to take reasonable care for their own safety and health and make sure their acts or omissions don’t adversely affect the health or safety of others.  So if your suffering from fatigue, we know this can affect your  judgement, performance and reaction times just as badly as a high blood alcohol reading. 

SO if you are not getting a minimum of 7 hours sleep, constantly waking up through the night, if you wake up still tired, you need to take some steps towards addressing your sleep.

Here are some quick tips

1. Understand your sleep, rest and recovery, minimum 7 hours sleep. 
2. Get a Sleep Test if you think you have a problem.
3. Talk to a Health Stack – Sleep Health Professional for free by making a booking from your organisation
4. Look out for signs of fatigue in the people you work with.

• • • frequent yawning
    • increased clumsiness
    • red / droopy eyes
    • low productivity and irritability and more
    • trouble with memory or concentration and por spelling

        5. Talk to your supervisor and take steps to manage fatigue, for example:

• • • take a break and get some sunshine or light
    • have a nap (night shift)
    • drink water or do some stretching or physical exercise
    • adjust the jobs you are doing to remove the high risk tasks from your normal routine.

 

Sleep is the foundation of your health, prioritise it, if you think you have an ongoing sleep issue and your with Health Stack, book in to see our Sleep Health professionals today.

As a manager

You should treat Fatigue as a specific safety hazard and it should be a part of the risk and safety management of people and the organisation. 

Implementing a Safety Management approach (SMA) to fatigue means a fatigue-related accident is seen as the final point of a longer causal chain of events. From a legal context, adopting a SMA approach to fatigue shifts the context from a diminished capacity to voluntary impairment, delivering the result that an employee is also responsible for a safe working environment. 

When an employee puts their hand up and alerts team leaders that they maybe experiencing fatigue symptoms, its time to act.

1. Discuss causes of fatigue
2. Discuss Risks 
3. Make appropriate changes to work to accommodate
   • • Remove high high tasks
     • Increase rest breaks
     • Increase coffee
     • Increase communication 
     • Increase lighting exposure
     • Nil overtime
     • Book appointment with Health Stack Sleep Guide
     • Check back in 2 hours later

There are many more things people and organisations can do to manage fatigue. Health Stack are a leader in the Sleep field pioneering the Sleep Health Professional, a real person people can talk to to get Better Sleep.

Talk to us today.