How many workplace incidents and accidents can you attribute to fatigue? Without a fatigue management plan, the answer is likely “none.” Yet, the reality is that 13% of workplace injuries can be attributed to fatigue, while fatigued workers have a 62% increased risk of accidents.
A comprehensive fatigue risk management plan enables you to assess your organization’s unique fatigue risk profile, document steps to measure, identify, and mitigate fatigue risk, and establish the investigation protocol to determine the role fatigue may have played during incidents.
In safety-sensitive and high-hazard industries like mining, transportation, oil & gas, and utilities, where fatigue risk is often the highest, a fatigue management plan can save lives. Here are the steps to building a fatigue management plan for your organization.
Does your organization need a fatigue management plan? Conduct a fatigue risk assessment to determine how high your risk profile is.
Ask managers, supervisors, health & safety leaders, and workers about their perception of fatigue in the workplace. Get an understanding of their job duties to determine if there are any fatigue hazards on site, such as long-haul driving, excessive noise or vibration, long commutes. Ask about the existing protocols that are followed when workers report being too fatigued to work safely.
Analyze worker schedules to determine if there are any red flags, such as night shift, long hours, and consecutive work days. Certain schedules are known to be worse for fatigue risk.
Review historical workplace incident data to determine if fatigue may have been a root cause. For example, how many hours did the operator work before the incident occurred and what time of day did it occur?
With a fatigue risk assessment in hand, it’s time to get leadership support. When the C-suite buys into the fatigue management plan and allocates resources to a fatigue management initiative, it is more likely to have a positive impact.
Having the data to back up your request to create a formal fatigue management plan – that identifies your organizational fatigue risk and prior fatigue-related incidents and their negative consequences – can help you get an endorsement from senior leadership.
Your comprehensive fatigue risk assessment will likely highlight key areas where fatigue risk is highest. It will likely identify hazards and red flags.
Now it’s time to develop a fatigue management policy to address these issues. This document should outline key strategies for managing and mitigating fatigue risk, expectations for your workforce and leadership, and steps to ensure compliance with safety standards and best practices.
For example, your fatigue management policy will likely include work-hour limits and shift schedule guidelines to prevent excessive long hours, too much overtime, schedules that don’t provide enough opportunities for sleep between shifts, and best practices for break schedules.
In this policy, you should also document the steps that employees and supervisors should take when fatigue risk is identified, such as self-reporting guidelines and non-punitive countermeasures to use.
Remember: A well-thought-out fatigue management policy isn’t just about establishing rules and guidelines. It’s about creating a safety culture that prioritizes worker safety as a shared responsibility.
If fatigue management is a shared responsibility, then all workers, from health and safety leaders to supervisors to employees should be able to access training that helps them understand, identify, and mitigate fatigue. That’s why most organizational fatigue management plans incorporate fatigue management training.
Most fatigue risk management plans fail when they are created just to sit on a shelf collecting dust. Make it a point to review your plan regularly as your organization grows, shifts change, employees turnover, and job duties expand. Add regular review periods to your calendar on a quarterly or annual basis.
During these periods, collect data on any workplace incidents that occur during that time. Talk to supervisors and employees about established countermeasures and schedules. Send out surveys to determine policy adoption rates and see how you can improve your fatigue management plan. Look for trends in HR and health and safety data to see if incident rates have improved.
Adjust as needed.
As with any new initiative or policy, you’ll likely face some challenges when attempting to implement your fatigue management plan. Here are some common obstacles and how to address them:
Cultural resistance: Fatigue can be difficult to identify, which can create resistance in the workplace. Further, some people may see fatigue as a personal issue, not a workplace hazard. Overcome this challenge by establishing non-punitive fatigue countermeasures, such as scheduling breaks. Make it clear that this policy is not in place to get anyone in trouble or to send them home.
Resource constraints: Ideally, your fatigue management plan would include a comprehensive audit and an investment in fatigue management software to monitor and measure fatigue objectively. In an ideal world, all workers would take part in your initiative, regardless of department. This may not be realistic, however. Start with high-risk areas of the organization. Consider a pilot program for a fatigue management software program to get buy in and see results before asking for a large investment. Build the plan incrementally.
Inconsistent enforcement: All supervisors and managers should enforce new fatigue management policies and guidelines consistently. However, upholding break schedules, changing long-established shift schedules, and denying overtime may be difficult for managers and supervisors to do during their busy days when they’ve always worked a certain way. To overcome this, find ways to include accountability measures in manager evaluations. For example, make sure all managers must log their fatigue mitigation strategies and countermeasures to create a track record. Work closely with managers, answer their questions, and follow up as needed. Start with a smaller group and then expand the plan further once compliance has been established.
A fatigue management plan is a structured approach to identify and manage risks related to workplace fatigue. It includes strategies for risk assessment, work-hour limits, shift scheduling, employee training, and monitoring systems to improve safety and productivity.
Six key strategies to manage fatigue include: 1. Setting work-hour limits to prevent long shifts. 2. Designing shift schedules that allow for adequate sleep. 3. Fatigue training programs. 4. Non-punitive fatigue self-reporting protocols. 5. Using fatigue monitoring software. 6. Providing health resources, including sleep hygiene programs and support for sleep disorders.