Workers are likely to be exposed to more than one type of psychosocial hazard or risk at any one time. Psychosocial hazards and risk factors interact with each other so they should not be considered in isolation.
As you read about fatigue, consider how this might look in your workplace, what other hazards are present and how they might be interacting and affecting workers.
Fatigue
Fatigue is a state of mental and/or physical exhaustion that reduces a worker’s ability to perform work safely and effectively. Fatigue can be both a psychosocial hazard and the outcome of being exposed to psychosocial hazards. It more common in situations where workers work long hours, often with high mental, physical and emotional demands. The causes of fatigue can be work-related, personal or both, but when a worker comes to work fatigued, it can negatively affect safety at the workplace.
Some signs that might indicate a worker is experiencing fatigue
- Decreased awareness
- Excessive yawning or falling asleep at work
- Reduced coordination
- Impaired decision making and judgement
- Short term memory problems
- The inability to concentrate
- Changes in behaviour (e.g. arriving late for work).
What are the effects
Psychosocial hazards can create stress, and when workers have a negative response to stress it can negatively affect their health. Prolonged, frequent or severe exposure to hazards can cause a stress response and result in physical or psychological harm or injury to workers.
Psychological injuries cause a range of cognitive, emotional and behavioural symptoms that significantly impact a worker’s professional and personal life. It alters how they feel, think and behave which can negatively impact a worker’s relationships and well-being.
Examples of psychological injuries include depression, anxiety, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and sleep disorders. Examples of physical injuries include exhaustion, musculoskeletal disorders and cardiovascular disease.
When psychosocial hazards are not managed the likelihood that a worker will develop a psychological injury increases over time, especially when they are exposed to multiple psychosocial hazards.
In a workplace setting psychosocial injuries can lead to increased absenteeism (workers not coming to work) or presenteeism (workers working at a reduced capacity), high staff turnover and low team morale.
To safeguard workers health and business productivity it is crucial that the PCBU’s identifies, assesses, and manages the risks associated with fatigue.
Identifying and assessing the risk
An employer or a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) have a duty to protect workers from risk of harm from psychosocial hazards and risks. The first step is identifying and assessing whether there is risk of fatigue in the workplace.
Some ways in which PCBU’s can identify and assess fatigue include:
- Consulting workers. Workers may talk about hazards in different ways, in formal or informal settings. For example, they may raise concerns about the workload, work schedule, work related travel or overtime.
- Using surveys and tools. Organisations like Thrive at Work or People at Work for example, have surveys and psychosocial risk assessment tools businesses/sites are able to use.
- Observing work and behaviours. For example, showing up late for work, constant yawning, bad decision making and having a hard time concentrating can be caused by fatigue.
- Reviewing available information. For example, review records of overtime, time off, injuries, incidents, employee assistance program (EAP) trends or workers’ compensation. Look for any patterns that might indicate that workers are fatigued.
- Having a way for workers to report and encourage reporting. Treating workers’ concerns seriously and respectfully will help encourage reporting.
- Identifying other hazards present and consider them together. Hazards can interact and combine to create new, changed or higher risks.
- Considering how long, how often and how severely workers are exposed to hazards. The longer a worker is at work fatigued, the higher the risk that workers may be harmed.
Controlling the risk
Everyone in the workplace has a duty to manage hazards and risks to worker physical and psychological health and safety. These duties are set out in the Work Health and Safety Act 2020. A workplace where mental health and wellbeing is a priority benefits everyone.
Businesses, PCBUs and site senior executives
A PCBU has the primary duty of care under the WHS Act to ensure that workers and other people are not exposed to health and safety risks arising from work carried out. This duty includes:
- providing and maintaining a work environment that is without risks to health and safety
- providing and maintaining safe systems of work
- monitoring the health and safety of workers and the conditions at the workplace to ensure that work related illnesses and injuries are prevented.
Regulation 55D of the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 and Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulations 2022 explains that PCBU’s have a duty to implement control measures to eliminate psychosocial risks so far as is reasonably practicable. If this is not reasonably practicable, then PCBU’s must implement control measures to minimise the risks so far as is reasonably practicable.
Here are some practical ways PCBU’s could eliminate or manage fatigue:
- implementing a fatigue management plan or workplace fatigue policy
- modifying shift work and rosters to allow for adequate rest and recovery
- if the PCBU is providing accommodation, ensuring that the accommodation is adequate to allow for workers to have good quality sleep
- encouraging workers to report any concerns they have about work-related fatigue
- providing training about managing fatigue both at work and at home.
Once implemented, regularly reviewing and monitoring the controls is essential to ensure their effectiveness, and that any adjustments or improvements of the controls can be made if required.
The review process is used to confirm that control measures are working as expected and checking that other hazards and risk factors have not been introduced when implementing or modifying controls. It can also identify learning opportunities for the purpose of continuous improvement.
For workers
As a worker, you must take reasonable care for your own health and safety and not adversely affect the health and safety of others. You must comply with reasonable instructions and cooperate with reasonable health and safety policies or procedures.
Learn more about workers and others at the workplace.