The pre-Christmas period is busy as usual. . .but is your workplace too busy to be Psychosocially safe this year?

All businesses experience the pre-Christmas rush. Workplaces seek to ‘clear the decks’ before they ‘deck the halls’ with their family and friends, and this in turn places additional demands on other workplaces. The cycle is unhelpful for all businesses and is likely to contribute to fatigue of workers. Will this year be any different?

Humans are generally very good at dealing with periodic ‘spikes’ or ‘surges’ in work output, but long term fatigue is unsafe. Fatigue can be mental and/or physical. Fatigue causes almost 10,000 serious workplace injuries each year and costs the economy close to $40 billion a year in productivity and healthcare costs. Safe Work Australia recently released a draft Code of Practice for managing fatigue risks at work (click here).

Workplaces consistently implement high quality drug and alcohol programs and testing yet the majority of businesses still fail to address fatigue despite the symptoms being remarkably similar eg less productivity, more mistakes, cognitive and memory impairment, increased distractibility, reduced dexterity and poorer communication.

Our thoughts

Grit, stamina and resilience are worthwhile pursuits for efficiency, but contemporary community and legal expectations have changed and employers need to adapt to the ‘higher bar’ imposed by the proactive duty to have psychosocially safe workplaces. Fatigue management is no exception. Regularly meeting with your direct reports is still our ‘go to’ solution.

Managers are going to have to not only adjust their own expectations and behaviours but start to model them as well. Being told to “harden up” is not the answer. Planning and learning to say “No” to unrealistic or unreasonable third party demands is awkward, unpalatable and may cost highly valuable income or opportunities, but it just might be the only safe way to navigate fatigue risks.

Action Items for Managers

• Check out the new Code of Practice and assess against your Christmas period

• Track your peak or surge time periods and plan for additional support, particularly around Christmas on an individual and group basis

• Monitor, encourage self-identification and then address fatigue symptoms for individuals through a combination of bespoke: reallocation of work, batching tasks (rather than multi-tasking), intermittent and unplanned rest periods, blackout periods, and planned genuine leave

• Understand your clients/ customers/ suppliers genuine needs and map them out in terms of urgency and importance

• Set realistic timeframes for work completion with your direct report and clients/ customers/ suppliers

• Delay, reallocate, or turn work away if it is unrealistic and/or unsafe

• Stop bragging about being burnt out and working hard, late and long

• Positively promote, model and enforce “switching off” times

• Eliminate incentives (including financial and personal motivations) to work while fatigued

• If all of this is ‘too late’ now, commit to starting afresh in 2025 and stick to it!

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