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Working Hours
Fatigue

The risk assessment must consider the nature of the work, the adequacy of rest breaks and the working environment.  It must also consider people who are at particular risk.  In the case of fatigue this includes people affected by the following:
  • Some medication (e.g. for hay fever or travel sickness)
  • Sleep disturbances
  • Alcohol
  • Illness (e.g. flu)
  • or those who are working or travelling alone (because they can sleep for up to 10 minutes without noticing, and with nobody to tell them).
The working pattern should be considered as part of the risk assessment and organised so that the length of each day is not excessive. Time spent travelling to and from the location should be included as part of the working day.
 
Those who self-schedule need to be aware of the risks of long working hours and fatigue, and those who schedule the work of others must understand the increased risks caused by long working hours, the pressure of deadlines and fatigue.
 
Where practical, no one should be required to carry out complex, demanding or high risk tasks when they may be tired or not fully alert e.g. driving long distances at end of long working day. Consider alternative safe options e.g. sharing tasks, over-night stays to avoid late travel, use of public transport, etc.
  • Causes of fatigue:
  • Working patterns including
  • Long days, 
  • Early starts
  • Night work
  • A run of long days/broken nights
  • Concentration for long periods
  • Monotonous or repetitive tasks e.g driving
  • Heavy physical work 
  • Environmental issues e.g. noise, lighting temperature, ventilation
  • Stress
  • Health issues including pregnancyDaily rhythm effects add to the risk:  most people will feel less alert in the mid afternoon and around midnight, and will be particularly low in the early hours of the morning.  
 
Effects of fatigue
Everyone is different and is affected differently by fatigue, so this information is necessarily general. Mental fatigue is the most dangerous as it can result in errors of judgement. Mistakes are made in apparently trivial tasks, as tired people may:
  • Miss out stages in a check
  • Forget to clip on their safety line
  • Connect the wrong leads
  • Fall asleep the moment they stand still
  • Forget who has which cue
  • Stop thinking
  • Stand in the way of dangerous machinery.

 

Unable to respond to change

Fatigue is insidious and may not be apparent to those affected, or those around them someone doing monotonous work (e.g. driving) might look awake, but be almost entirely switched-off. People go through cycles of sleepiness and alertness, with the sleepy periods getting longer and the alert phases shorter. The change from sleepiness to actual sleep is controlled by a switching mechanism in the brain, so it happens suddenly and unexpectedly.
 
Recklessness
Sleepiness seems to affect a person's mood, making them more optimistic, less cautious, and more reckless.  Researchers think this is why people keep going when they know they are barely capable of keeping alert.
 
 
Precautions:
 
Scheduling guidelines
(see above)
 
 
Task rotation
Some jobs need higher levels of concentration than others. It may therefore be possible to rotate the jobs within the team to maintain the necessary level of concentration throughout the day.
 
 
Monotonous or repetitive tasks
The effects of fatigue tend to be more marked if the task is monotonous or repetitive.  A prime example is driving.  The Highway Code suggests ways to minimise risk of a road accident because of fatigue.
 
The best advice to a driver who is feeling sleepy is to stop driving.  The best way to avoid the circumstance arising is to plan so that no one is driving when they may be fatigued.  The risks of driving early in the morning, after a long day, or in the dead of night, may be reduced by sharing driving with others who are not tired or eliminated by using public transport where it is available or a driver, or an overnight stay.
 

Myths about precautions 
  • One of the myths surrounding fatigue is that in an emergency the adrenaline surge gets people through.  The truth is that emergencies aren't the problem. 
  • Exercise has little or no effect on alertness.  Indeed, people who have been exercising / doing hard physical work, are more likely to become sleepy.
  • Listening to the radio/tape / CD does not make people more alert it just stops them realising how tired they are.
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