There are many businesses that manage to operate around the clock. Obviously, this requires shift work to ensure that capital resources are utilized for as long as possible. However, the downside to this is the effect of fatigue on productivity.
Tired people are prone to making mistakes, they operate more slowly and less effectively. They tend to do things the long the way because the routine is familiar and they don’t have to think. But they fail to see the efficient shortcuts that could be used. Fatigue causes their concentration to lapse and this is reflected in their quality of work, accidents, damage to products and damage to equipment.
Because there are so many a round-the-clock operations, we tend to overlook how fatigued the employees are when they are working. If you are working night shifts, you obviously have to sleep during the day. It is well known that daytime sleep is not is restful as nighttime sleep. Noise and light prevent good sleep during the day. Inevitably, night shift workers exhibit more fatigue than day shift workers.
It has been estimated that, even being very conservative, fatigue robs at least 5% of the productivity in the manufacturing plants of the United States. Where the fatigue in shift work operators has been reduced, their productivity has increased by 5 to 20%. This is a significant amount. All the other related costs add up. Think about the downtime caused by industrial accidents, the resulting litigation, the lowering of morale in the workforce, the long-term damage to the victim and the enervating effect on the corporate leadership.
This sort of fatigue is not only experienced by the workers. Managers and supervisors are just as prone to make poor decisions when they are tired. Historically, some of these decisions have had catastrophic effects. For example, the Exxon Valdez, the nuclear plant at Chernobyl and the Union Carbide disaster at Bhopal. Fatigue was a factor in each of these major incidents.
Shift work has any other negative effect on productivity. There is a significant number of people in the community who cannot, for various reasons, work on shifts. This contributes to a steady stream of people leaving jobs because they find shift work unacceptable for social, physical or medical reasons.
Every time a shift worker leaves, there are hiring and training costs. These costs are been estimated at $10,000 on average. During this time of training, productivity is lower until the new hire reaches the competence level of the departed staff member. This is another significant cost. In the US economy there are over 10 million shift workers and assuming 1% of them leave each year, the conservative loss to the country can be estimated at over $1 billion.
To counter the effects and costs of fatigue, it would pay any employer to look very closely at shift patterns, hours of work and job demands. Changes in these areas could well reduce fatigue, improve productivity and benefit the manufacturing process as well as the staff members.
