A new report from the US Department of Transportation has been released that examines the relationship between accidents and incidents amongst US rail industry maintenance-of-way employees and their corresponding work schedules.
Ten U.S. railroads participated in the study by providing MOW data. Study methodology consisted of using a biomathematical fatigue model to review work schedules to determine if they exceeded thresholds of acceptability on 12 factors that are known to be related to impaired performance due to fatigue. Participating railroads provided 10-day schedules to facilitate modeling of fatigue prior to the accident or incident. Exceeding the fatigue risk threshold on any of the 12 factors indicates elevated risk due to fatigue accumulation and subsequent impairment of performance. Results indicate that portions of the work schedules exceeded fatigue risk threshold levels for almost all 12 factors measured and in some cases, there were multiple factors that contributed to exceeding the fatigue risk threshold. This understanding can inform efforts to optimize MOW worker schedules to reduce fatigue and related human performance errors. The results may also support changes to safety standards regarding regulations for MOW work/rest periods to be consistent with other railroad employee work/rest regulations.
Company: Can you train our employees in fatigue? Me: Yes. Company: Good. We need to solve this problem. Me: You won’t.
As many of you know, my goal is to continually drive the fatigue conversation until it is firmly recognized as a hazard to be dealt with at the organizational level. Unfortunately, there remains a strong undercurrent within management structures that suggests that sleep and alertness are completely in the hands of the worker, and that training is the answer.
Wrong.
The reality is, it doesn’t matter what an individual does at home if their work causes excessive amounts of fatigue, or if their work schedule doesn’t accommodate for adequate recuperative sleep before returning to duties the next day. The same is true if you force workers to take three different jobs to make ends meet because you don’t want to cover benefits associated with full-time work (I’m looking at you, health care).
Enter prescriptive rules and regulations.
Government: Can you help us establish new fatigue management regulations? Me: Yes. Government: Good. We need to solve this problem. Me: You won’t.
And it doesn’t work.
What the science says
There is no question that science has definitively established a connection between fatigue, safety, performance, and work schedule design. However, there is a critical gap in scientific data to link work/rest rules as the go-to solution or to quantify the benefits of such regulations. This is not to say there are no benefits, but the data has not been produced. We cannot forget that the objective should be to improve safety by eliminating fatigue-related hazards or reducing their risk levels, and this requires quantification.
Furthermore, most work/rest rules are not up to date with our current scientific understanding of sleep neurobiology and functional performance, which is why many government and industry bodies are looking to update what’s in place. Specifically, they don’t account for critical details such as:
Circadian factors (e.g., time of day that work/sleep occurs, impact of permanent vs. rotating shifts, predictability of schedule, acute fatigue vs. cumulative fatigue, etc.);
Homeostasis factors (e.g., short and long break durations, split schedules, total consecutive hours of wakefulness, etc.);
Workloads (physical, cognitive, environmental, situational); or
Other conditions that influence personal fatigue levels (e.g., commuting factors, second jobs, etc.).
Complicating Matters
Managing work schedules is further complicated when an organization has to accommodate for unusual operational requirements (e.g., unplanned events, emergencies, shutdowns, etc.), collective agreements that provide both incentives and disincentives to when employees choose to work, and the employee’s own personal preferences as dictated by seniority, lifestyle, and potential earnings. It cannot be overlooked that unions and the employees themselves must share responsibility for safe and healthy choices associated with the work scheduling decisions that they are involved in.
Prescriptive rules do not acknowledge these complications, and it is extremely unrealistic to think that even new regulations will cover all contingencies and still be practical in all affected organizations.
Simply put, prescriptive rules are not the answer, and will not guarantee that a worker shows up fit for work. As most government agencies have recognized, hours-of-service regulations offer little value if they are not supported by a fatigue management process. That means regardless of regulations, organizations still need to do their part.
Ask yourself this. What do you do when you notice an employee who is assigned to a safety-critical task yawning, rubbing his eyes, and moving slower than usual, and you know they still have four more hours on shift? What actual procedures do you currently have in place to:
Allow the employee to communicate that they are struggling with fatigue (this requires a “just” culture, where the worker does not face punitive action – is it his fault the baby kept him awake all night?);
Train supervisors in how to assess fatigue-related risk (how are they to measure the risk? What thresholds have been established?);
Provide supervisors with tools to mitigate the risk (what rest and recovery options do you have at your disposal? Can safety critical tasks be performed by someone else, or moved to a different time of day?);
Get the worker home safely?
Summary
Is there a role for work/rest rules or hours-of-service regulations?Yes! Do employees need to be trained in how to manage fatigue? Absolutely.
My message is this… don’t lose sight of the organizational responsibilities inherent to solving this issue. If your workers perform safety-critical tasks and you do not have a formal fatigue management process in place, be assured, regulations are coming that are broader and will affect all industries. Many government agencies and industry groups have already reached out for input from myself and other leaders in the field. Don’t wait for others to set the rules for what you can or cannot do. Any prescriptive hours forced upon you by the dream police will still need to be balanced with economic viability, collective agreements, and changing societal and customer demands.
Identify your fatigue related hazards.
Assess their risk levels.
Mitigate, mitigate, mitigate.
Because they’re coming for you.
(P.S. My apologies to anyone born after 1979 that did not experience the power-punk that was Cheap Trick and one of their greatest hits, “The Dream Police.” You know not what you’re missing! But I digress…)
(P.P.S. If anyone from Cheap Trick is following this, please know that you can send royalties to myself at mharnett@solarisfm.com for the unexpected surge in downloads of your music.)
The original article appeared in WorkSafe BC Magazine. Article by Sarah Ripplinger
Fatigue is more than just a bad night’s sleep. Being in a chronic state of tiredness has adverse health effects from slow response times to increased vulnerability to disease. Employers can reduce the harm by creating a fatigue risk-management system.
Getting enough sleep is essential for our health, but it’s often easy to believe we can overcome fatigue with another cup of coffee or a splash of cold water to the face. In reality, the rise of digital technology and 24/7 workplaces is changing the way we work, and making it easier to work at any time of the day.
This comes with business benefits in terms of workplace productivity, flexible work schedules, and meeting growing consumer needs. But the flip side is that, according to a sleep review from Dalhousie University, only 26 percent of Canadians get a minimum seven hours of sleep per night. And an estimated 40 to 50 percent of workers are fatigued at work.
“Globally, fatigue has been identified as a contributory factor in many serious and fatal incidents spanning decades. It is having real impacts on workplace health and safety,” says Heather Kahle, a human factors specialist and ergonomist at WorkSafeBC. “Fatigue decreases one’s ability to perceive and process important information necessary for safety. It may also decrease one’s ability to adequately respond to workplace hazards.”
More than feeling drowsy or sleepy, fatigue is an acute or
chronic state of tiredness. Disruptions to our body’s natural circadian rhythms
— which affect our sleeping and waking cycles — from such things as shift work,
long shifts, and back-to-back shifts increase the risk
of workplace fatigue. If left unchecked, fatigue can contribute
to long-term health effects, such as a vulnerability to certain types of
cancers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Putting workplace fatigue to bed WorkSafeBC held its inaugural Fatigue Risk Management Symposium on June 7, 2018, to raise awareness of the risks associated with fatigue in the workplace and the importance of addressing them. Nearly 200 professionals from a variety of industries heard from five leading experts on fatigue-related risk in the workplace.
Presentations and discussions covered topics ranging from
fatigue risk management to circadian rhythms and how fatigue influences workplace
performance. Presenter Mike Harnett, president of Solaris Fatigue Management,
emphasized why it’s important for employers to take an active role in
preventing fatigue. She notes that fatigue in the workplace only became part of
the broader risk assessment dialogue for employers in the past three to four
years, largely due to increased reporting on scientific findings that show fatigue
impairment is real. Before that, fatigue was often seen as an issue for workers,
not employers. Fatigue risk management is a shared responsibility. “We cannot
continue to blame the worker and classify the cause of incidents as ‘human
error.’” The challenge now, Harnett says, is to continue to raise the profile
of fatigue as a risk-management priority. “Management needs to see fatigue as a
business issue
and collect metrics to drive informed decision making,” says
Harnett. “Only through the collection of
objective data can management set targets that support KPIs [key performance
indicators]. As we often say in the safety world: What gets managed, gets
done.” Managing fatigue from the top down A fatigue risk-management system
(FRMS) is a highly useful framework employers can use to proactively identify
and evaluate hazards and risks that may result in harm or adverse outcomes. Critical
to this undertaking is establishing an integrated, consistent, and trustworthy
system-wide approach to identify, assess, and control for the risks that can
escalate in the presence of fatigue. Transparent reporting and evaluation
policies are also essential ingredients of a successful FRMS. “With fatigue
recognized as a key contributory factor in workplace health and safety, FRMS is
a solid framework used worldwide to measure, mitigate, and manage the risk of
fatigue,” says Kahle. “It can be used to set priorities and establish baseline
data to evaluate fatigue management strategies over time to ensure that
targets are being met and the appropriate interventions are
being used. “Employers will have fatigued workers in the workplace at some
point. It’s important to ask yourself if hazards in the workplace increase the
risk of harm or could lead to adverse safety outcomes when workers are
fatigued,” adds Kahle. “When workers miss changes or
important information in their environment because of fatigue, it affects
everything we do in the workplace. Addressing this can save businesses
countless dollars due to injury and lost productivity.” For more information
To assess the level of your daytime sleepiness, check out the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, which is easily searchable online.
Mike was interviewed for thefollowing article, published on the Business Insurance website in 2017.Author: Louise Esola
How
much sleep are employees getting at night? Workplace safety experts are calling
this one of the most frequently overlooked but critical questions to answer in
employer safety programs due to rising fatigue risks.
The
Park Ridge, Illinois-based American Society of Safety Engineers is funding an
ongoing study on fatigue through the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New
York. The study, which began in August 2015, is surveying what workers think
about fatigue and whether they can recognize the signs in their everyday work
life, according to researcher Lora Cavuoto, an assistant professor in the
university’s Department of Industrial and System Engineering.
Fatigue
is often overlooked in safety programs because “it’s hard to pinpoint the
instant it happens,” Ms. Cavuoto said.
“If
we think about fall risk, a dominating injury, you can see those points; you
can see you have a worker at height and know the mechanism for solving that.
It’s fall protection,” she said. “Fatigue is a little more subtle and in the
background. Workers might not be aware they are feeling the consequences (of
fatigue).”
Michael
Trufant, an Asheville, North Carolina-based fatigue awareness program manager
for Aeroflow Healthcare Inc., which sells sleep apnea tests, called fatigue an
“epidemic.” “You can wear your eye protection, but (fatigue) is where it is,”
he said.
“A person who sleeps only four to five hours a day is the same as a (person with a) 0.08 blood alcohol level,” said Mr. Trufant, touting research that’s been echoed over the years by many safety organizations — from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The
Itasca, Illinois-based National Safety Council put the issue on the forefront
of its agenda recently. In 2016, the nonprofit tackling workplace safety issues
launched a fatigue initiative, providing statistics on how prevalent the issue
is becoming in a report issued in July. And this fall, it is launching a
fatigue calculator for employers to gauge how tired their employees are and
what risks are created as a result of fatigue.
“The
tired employees are increasing safety risk,” said Emily Whitcomb, an
Itasca-based senior program manager with the fatigue initiative. “Employers are
becoming more interested in this issue (because) of the major consequences it
leads to.”
The
statistics are alarming, she said, listing some of what she called the most
eye-opening in the council’s national survey of 2,000 employees across several
industries: 43% of those surveyed reported not getting enough sleep every day;
16% reported falling asleep while driving; and 27% reported falling asleep on
the job in the past month.
“That’s scary if you are doing a safety-critical job,” she added. The council also narrowed down a list of nine risk factors that contribute to the likelihood of an accident occurring at work — a list that includes long shifts, demanding jobs and long commutes. “Nearly everyone (at 97%) reported at least one risk factor, and 80% reported at least two. With that, your risk factor increases,” Ms. Whitcomb said.
Experts
have long pointed to such high-profile incidences as the Chernobyl nuclear
disaster in Russia, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, the
Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska and even the most recent string of collisions
at sea involving U.S. naval vessels.
“When
we look at the largest incidents in the world, all of them are fatigue-related,”
said Mike Harnett, Calgary, Alberta-based vice president of human factors for
Six Safety Systems Inc., which delivers solutions in the United States and
Canada to reduce worker fit-for-duty risks associated with drugs, alcohol and
fatigue in the workplace.
“We
constantly blamed the operator, but it’s the flaws in the system we have to
look for,” said Ms. Harnett. “That’s not human error; they fell asleep because
they were not getting enough sleep.”
The
council’s research found that 16% of workers surveyed reported at least one
near miss or safety incident because of fatigue.
Ms.
Whitcomb said much of the problem exists in current employment culture, which
is shifting slowly.
“The
hard thing with fatigue is we always see that pushing ourselves, putting sleep
to the side, is seen as a badge of honor,” she said. “If you lose sleep and put
in your overtime, people think it will pay off in the end.”
Ms.
Harnett said corporate policymakers and executives are often behind the curve,
as many have “gone through” fatigue to find success. “The harder and the longer
they worked, the better it was for promotions,” she said. “We have to convince
management they have a problem.”
The
latest interventions can be as simple as a questionnaire for workers on sleep
habits, both before or after an incident, Ms. Harnett said. Another solution is
to train employees on the importance of sleep and to limit longer shifts, she
added.
Experts
say a burgeoning area is in research and testing for sleep apnea and other
conditions that can cause a person to be tired during a workday.
“What we are trying to do is get employers to push sleep health programs and sleep screening,” said Ms. Whitcomb. “We found that 90% of sleep disorders are untreated.”
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