Do you monitor for fatigue and burnout in your workforce?
Injury rates show a significant increase as hours grow over 60 hours a week.
What Should You Do To Bring Awareness To Signs Of Fatigue?
Safety professionals that guide their company's health and safety programs should keep watch for employee fatigue and burnout. Start training your supervisors and management team to recognize the signs of fatigue. This will help your and your team reduce the risk. During your next safety meeting or toolbox talk discuss fatigue awareness with the information below.
Top 5 Things To Look For Regarding Fatigue Awareness
- Exhaustion
- Mistakes
- Sickness
- Depression
- Irritability
Exhaustion
When your employees complain about feeling exhausted all the time, they could be experiencing burnout. An overload of stress at work can make it impossible for employees to relax at the end of the day or sleep well, which leads to a constant state of fatigue.
Once sleep deprivation arises, an employee's complaints can range from simple tiredness to more serious side effects like hallucinations, trouble recalling memories, and physical pain. If your employees are grumbling about not getting enough sleep, dig into the topic more and find out the root causes to start combating burnout symptoms.
Mistakes
One of the key signs of burnout is the inability to concentrate or remember important things. If your employees are constantly making mistakes or forgetting about important meetings and deadlines, you need to investigate the reasons behind their lack of attention.
Take a supportive approach to find out what the problem is, set up a meeting where they can talk about their experience of work and explain which aspects of their job are stressing them out. You can then help create a plan to combat burnout.
Reassuring your employees that they won't be reprimanded if they express feelings of burnout is essential to creating a successful wellness program. If your employees are worried they may be written up or fired for discussing burnout symptoms, the side effects and mistakes will only progress, taking a major toll on your organization.
Sickness
Sickness often happens when our energy reserves are low. We become more vulnerable to colds and flues. Keep your eye on the number of sick days taken. If they are higher than usual there may be more happening.
Depression
Employee burnout often leads to depression, which can manifest in the workplace as a lack of confidence, acting withdrawn, and excessive worrying about deadlines. Signs of fatigue are frequently seen when an individual is suffering from depression.
Employees that are burned out will often lose their passion for their work.
Depression in the workplace needs to be handled with care. Consider getting professional help if you see these signs in an employee.
Facilitating a safe and understanding environment for employees to express their needs is key to combatting depression from burnout. Encourage employees to talk about their feelings so you can assist them in receiving help.
Irritability
Tensions in the workplace can simply be the result of a clash of personalities, but if an employee is suddenly unable to get along with anyone, it could be a sign that the person is under a lot of pressure. It is important to consider if an employee is acting out of character in regard to an altercation or outburst.
Key Takeaways For Fatigue Awareness & Fatigue Awareness Toolbox Talk
Watch for the indications above that your team might be getting fatigued and burnt out!
Develop your company safety manual, practices and procedures to help your team understand how to spot and handle the situation when it arises.
Check out our blog on Free Toolbox Talks For Safety Meetings and download our resource that contains toolbox talks on Fatigue Awareness.
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