Last Updated: 27 November 2024
SmartCap remains the only real-time, all-day fatigue monitoring wearable for both individuals and businesses, which provides early warning alerts to empower self-management, and risk alarms when intervention may be required. Hand-in-hand with such data can be the revelation that some individuals are much more routinely at risk, which highlights a need for assistance. This post provides some discussion and guidance around developing assistance-focused processes to ensure the underlying cause of fatigue can be identified and addressed.
Fatigue risk in context
From the workforce point of view, there often exists a fear that the introduction of monitoring technology will lead to discipline or dismissal for those individuals that are most often impacted by fatigue. While this may not be the case, it is critical that the management personnel responsible for creating or following an assistance process be sensitive to this concern. It is also important that they understand the wide-ranging causes of fatigue and that it is not necessarily something that the employee has control over, nor that it automatically makes them a higher risk to the business.
There are many common causes of fatigue, and the majority are unrelated to lifestyle choices. In fact, many are subtle and often hidden from the affected individual. Put simply, routine fatigue risk is rarely someone’s ‘fault’ and should not be treated as such.
Identifying the need for assistance
If particular individuals demonstrate an ongoing struggle with fatigue risk through repeated and/or numerous SmartCap fatigue alarms, it is advisable to provide assistance through a formal, clearly defined process. This process should begin with criteria for identifying the need for assistance. Identifying these “higher alarm frequency individuals”, or HAFIs, need not rely solely on insights gained from use of SmartCap.
An example approach would define a HAFI as anyone that meets one or more of the following criteria:
- The individual has received three or more escalation/intervention alarms on three or more shifts within a shift rotation (or week)
- The individual has communicated to a supervisor on several occasions that they regularly struggle with fatigue, or
- An individual that the supervisor feels is “high risk”, based on a subjective assessment of operator behaviour, incident history, SmartCap risk profile, and other fatigue risk related assessment.
As with all elements of your process, the criteria set should be routinely reviewed to ensure the right balance between prompt identification for assistance and providing the ability for individual self-management.
Thinking about a process
The following captures some of the considerations highlighted by a broad base of SmartCap customers when developing their formal assistance process, keeping in mind that acceptance of and engagement with the process is key to the target outcomes of employee wellbeing and improved safety.
Privacy
When identifying the specific cause of fatigue for an individual it should be noted that these touch on personal lifestyle choices, underlying medical conditions or individual circumstances that would be considered private matters. As such, appropriate sensitivity and treatment of information is paramount both in terms of legislative obligations and ensuring employee participation. To achieve both of these, our observations have been that best practice processes should provide clear guidance for management or assistance personnel involved on the treatment of information and their responsibilities.
Communication
Engagement often requires transparency, so like all formal processes/policies, there are tremendous benefits in providing visibility of your assistance process, including identification criteria for HAFIs. Some SmartCap clients have achieved this by displaying written copies in break rooms or other prominent locations, by including the process in their employee handbook, or by openly discussing the process during SmartCap training or onboarding.
Legislation
Beyond the legislative elements concerned with privacy, there may be other requirements for your process covered by legislation or industry regulations. An example of this may be the provision of alternative duties (under a formal duty-of-care regulation) or ensuring that there is no financial impact on the assisted employee throughout the process (e.g. no loss of typical wages). A formal legal review should accompany any HAFI assistance policy development.
Roles and Responsibilities
While every business differs in its approach to assistance, it is likely that several roles will play a part throughout your process. The following provides an example of such roles with possible responsibilities they may hold.
Supervisors: As the interface between management and the broader workforce, supervisors will likely play a key role in your assistance process. Through private, one-on-one engagement, supervisors can often identify the less complicated causes of fatigue and can provide direct advice. It is important also to recognise this unique relationship and its need to be maintained, which may require your process to limit such discussions to non-medical topics or advice.
Health/Industrial Hygiene team: These team members are often trained in the identification and assistance with excess fatigue, and as such are likely to play a more formal role in your process. It’s important to ensure these individuals have training in the interpretation of SmartCap data, and that they are provided with this prior to any engagement with a HAFI.
Superintendents: Though perhaps not directly engaged with employee assistance, superintendents may play a key role in ensuring the process is being followed. Also, if your process includes any mandatory participation of employees (within the bounds of relevant legislation and regulations), superintendents may be called upon in cases where employees demonstrate an unwillingness to comply.
Company doctors/nurses: If your business includes formally trained healthcare professionals, they will likely be involved if medical assessment or treatment is required. These individuals should know which relevant, local services (e.g. sleep centres) are available, and be able to provide information to employees about such processes and address any questions/concerns. Again, in line with legislative requirements, these team members may need to put processes in place to protect the privacy of participating employees.
Example process
The following example process is provided to prompt some thought as you work to cater a process to your unique business needs.
Stage 1: The first point of escalation/assistance could be a private, one-on-one discussion with the supervisor (or relevant position based on the company’s privacy provisions). The purpose of this discussion is to identify any extraneous circumstances that can explain the assessment of risk. Circumstances could include some of the more familiar examples provided in the supplement.
Stage 2: With this in mind, the outcome of the one-on-one discussion might lead to one of three decisions:
- The operator resumes duties, and a follow up meeting is scheduled for the next week or shift rotation to reassess,
- The operator resumes normal duties, with additional fatigue controls put in place (e.g. compulsory fatigue break on shift), or
- In the case where an unmanageable risk has been identified, the operator is temporarily assigned alternate duties while further assessment (medical and/or otherwise) are carried out.
Stage 3: If needed, further escalation could start with a thorough assessment of the individual’s SmartCap data. The SmartCap team are able to assess if there is any evidence that the SmartCap is not working for an individual, which can provide further assurance that the identified risk is real and requires mitigation.
Stage 4: Further escalation again should involve the Health or Industrial Hygiene team, where a checklist-type approach can be used to assess the more common causes of excessive fatigue that may be identified without medical testing (see supplement).
Stage 5: At the company’s discretion, final escalation may include a formal health assessment by a General Practitioner or referral for a sleep study. If this referral is to a healthcare professional outside of the business, it may also be useful to provide the employee with an information pack that includes SmartCap data and a record of previous steps in the process to assist.
Sunset Clause
If the management of HAFIs includes keeping record of a count of events, it may prove useful to consider criteria for which the count is “reset”. Members of the workforce that at one time struggled to effectively manage fatigue tend to be discouraged by being “permanently labelled”, or forever under the scrutiny of a Performance Management Plan. SmartCap customers have at times included a sunset clause under which management intervention was relaxed for operators demonstrating a pattern of reduced events for one month.
Getting the culture right
It’s important to again highlight the need to be sensitive to individual or workforce concerns. Being labelled as a “higher alarm frequency individual” may be perceived as a label of “unfit for the job”, or a “problem employee”. Remember, the causes of fatigue are highly varied and mostly not a result of inappropriate behaviour or lifestyle choices.
It may prove useful to celebrate the wins of your assistance initiative. While being sensitive to privacy, anonymous “good news stories” can help promote acceptance of your initiative and demonstrating your commitment to providing a safer workplace that values its employees’ wellbeing.
Benefits of Assisting Higher Alarm Frequency Individuals
In addition to the significant reduction of risk on site, assisting high risk individuals to discover and remedy the source of excess fatigue has many other benefits for your operation, the individuals involved, and the broader workforce, including:
- Reducing the production impacts of day-to-day risk management
- Reducing the day-to-day risk management workload of your supervisors
- Possible identification and subsequent treatment of significant health issues for HAFIs, which can lead to tremendous improvements in wellness and quality of life
- Clearly demonstrating to the broader workforce that your fatigue monitoring initiative is in the interests of health and safety, rather than discipline, and
- Improving the openness of dialogue with the workforce regarding health issues and lifestyle choices.
Published 27 November 2024
Last Updated: 27 November 2024