1 - Workplace Safety Regulations Cannot Include Mandates for Work Fatigue Management Because not all Fatigue is Work-related.
Although some industry-specific agencies include hours-of-service (HOS) guidelines to manage work fatigue, like in nursing and trucking, such guidelines are insufficient to effectively manage and monitor individual employees' work fatigue, especially when such fatigue is caused by circumstances unrelated to the job, such as illness or insufficient sleep.
Because of this, regulatory agencies like OSHA cannot realistically impose mandates for work fatigue management. Therefore, individual companies must move beyond just complying with regulations to create the safest possible workplaces.
Given the commonness of work fatigue as a contributing factor to workplace accidents, we can also conclude logically that fatigue commonly contributes to errors and productivity lapses, even without associated safety incidents.
Managing and monitoring employee fatigue pays more than just safety-related dividends, but also productivity and performance.
Work fatigue and non-alertness are natural states of mind that everyone experiences from time to time. Yet shift workers must often work against their bodies' natural circadian rhythms--the daily flow between states of rest and wakefulness--mainly if the shift schedule rotates between day and night shifts.
It is a myth that people become accustomed to working while fatigued or with accumulated sleep debt. In fact, research shows that even though fatigued people may not feel tired, they still demonstrate fatigue symptoms but do not always recognize the decline in their cognitive performance.