Domestic and Social Factors- when a worker changes schedule due to shifts in the work place, they face challenges in incorporating their patterns of work with his or her activities in life. In the case of workers in the night shift, most of them are unable to socialise with their relatives and friends, do the work in the house, or even performs social activities such as shopping and watching a movie because he or she must rest and gain enough sleep to perform his or her job at night. The inability to do the activities could eventually cause stress and fatigue to the worker because once in a while he or she needs these activities to keep himself or herself from the stress in the work place and if the worker is unable to do that most probably he or she will succumb to the pressures of work and stress.
Causes of Stress
According to the Transportation Research Board (2005) workers such as the transportation equipment operators experience fatigue and stress due to the following reasons:
Extended Work and Commuting Periods- most jobs especially in manual labours require longer working hours, therefore longer work hours could result to fatigue. The extension of working hours and inadequate period of sleep could result to stress and fatigue in the workplace.
Work Schedules- the changing work schedules of workers also contributes to the fatigue and stress of the worker. The following are the different work schedules that contributes to fatigue and stress in the work place.
Split-Shifts- this type of work schedule could increase the possibility of the worker to be fatigue because the schedules are not conducive to gaining sufficient sleep. When the work schedule requires employees to gain their sleep during periods that must be awake the quantity and quality of sleep greatly suffers.
Changing or Rotating Work Schedules-some jobs require frequent changes in the schedule, the different schedules could lead to transformation in the time of day wherein the workers could gain sleep that may result in inadequate levels of rest.
Unpredictable work Schedules-the unpredictable work schedules could force the workers to change their sleeping patterns which lead to low-quality of sleep. Moreover, the unpredictable schedules could also make workers wake sooner than necessary so that they could come to work on time.
Lack of Rest or Nap periods during work- a number of jobs do not require workers to take naps during work, however a number of research have pointed out that planned napping by the employees could restore the alertness of the workers in the job.
Sleep Disruption- disruptions in the sleep could make returning to sleep harder; studies have shown that disruption in sleep could have an adverse effect on the alertness of a worker during daytime.
Inadequate Exercise Opportunities- most of the workers especially from the white collar jobs do not have enough time to exercise therefore these people have the greatest probability to be stress or fatigue, studies have shown that individuals who exercise regularly have fewer episodes of being sleepy especially in the workplace.
Poor Diet- the food that people eat could be a factor in the quality of sleep an individual obtains some foods that could disrupt sleep are spicy foods which can cause heartburn during sleep that is why it must be avoided prior to bedtime, drinking alcohol could induce an individual to fragmented sleep, and drinking drinks with caffeine could delay the sleep of an individual.
Aside from the ones mentioned by the Transportation Research Board, Dullard discussed in her paper that individual factors and lifestyle of an individual or worker may contribute to stress and fatigue to. The different personality variables could also be involved in stress at work are the type A behaviour patterns, hardiness, locus of control, negative affectivity, and self esteem. These factors, according to Greenhaus and Parasuraman (1987) moderate the relationship among stressor-stress-strain, it can influence the evaluation of the environment, it can even create stressful environments, have the power to affect the range of responses to the stress and coping mechanisms.
Management of Fatigue and Stress in the Workplace
Fatigue and Stress could greatly affect the performance of the employees in the workplace, therefore the management as well as the labour unions must find ways to help ease and manage stress and fatigue in the working environment. Working hours is usually one of the main reasons why most employees experience stress and fatigue in the workplace. In order to counter it government agencies create measures. An example discussed by the Australian Safety and Compensation Council (2006) is in Western Australia wherein the WorkSafe WA released a code of practice on the working hours which provides guidance in the application of risk management to fatigue in all industries. The Code is based on management assumptions that are added through prescriptive guidelines for a wide range of risk factors. The launch of the Code has been supplemented by education campaign in order to let the management of various industries understand and be aware of their responsibilities to their workers.
