Speaker 1: 1:11

The individual can only do so much within a poorly designed structure. Fatigue is a workplace safety issue, Just like PPE. This should be managed at the organizational level Management. They have access to changing around the rosters, to breaking policies and actually allocating resources appropriately, Like real change will happen upstream.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Shift work can be brutal, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to A Healthy Shift. My name is Roger Sutherland, certified Nutritionist, veteran Law Enforcement Officer and 24-7 Shift Worker for almost four decades. Through this podcast, I aim to educate shift workers, using evidence-based methods, to not only survive the rigours of shift work but thrive. My goal is to empower shift workers to improve their health and wellbeing so they have more energy to do the things they love. Enjoy today's show and welcome back to another episode of a Healthy Shift podcast, and today I've brought on a guest, chloe Spring.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Today is going to be something that's completely different, as far as it's still going to be. Two people chatting have realised that it's all well and good for us to be able to put strategies in place for shift workers to actually optimise their lives inside and outside shift work, but one of the biggest problems that we do have in today's day and age is that at management level, it's being destroyed, and this is something that has to be addressed, because, while I know I started shift work 40 years ago, and while I was doing that shift work, I was never educated as to how to go about doing shift work. Now that means that people around that era and beyond, and everybody else who's not been educated as to how to go about doing shift work are progressing through the ranks and through management levels with absolutely no knowledge of how to go about managing shift workers as well, because no one's ever been taught and we always hear the phrase oh, it's what you signed up for. Or toughen up, princess. This is not good enough in today's day and age, with the science and the research that is around Now.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Today I've got Chloe Spring on, who is a former emergency nurse who's turned an entrepreneur, with a background in holistic health, evidence-based coaching and a very deep understanding of what it means to work odd hours as a shift worker, and she is currently on a mission to redefine how we support the people who keep our world running 24-7. And this is really important that people start attacking and supporting management to actually support their staff, and the benefits are enormous. So, without much further ado, let's introduce Chloe to the show and hear what it is that she's got to say about what management needs to be doing to support their staff. Welcome to the show, chloe Spring. How are you today, chloe?

Speaker 1: 4:29

I'm amazing, Roger. Thank you. How are you?

Speaker 2: 4:32

You are amazing. I've been really excited to get you onto this podcast today. You and I are going to come from a completely different angle today. We've talked all about the shift workers, but now it's time to look at the corporates and start helping our shift working community from a corporate level. So we're going to bring some awareness to things that need to occur in the corporate environment today. But first of all, for those that don't know who you are, chloe, can you tell us a bit about your background, from an emergency nurse to where you are today?

Speaker 1: 5:05

Firstly, just thank you so much for even having this platform. Thank you for bringing me on. I love that we both have this skin in the game right, we both live that experience. So me, I've lived the emergency nursing experience. I've done it for many, many years. So I've done all the night shifts, exposure to trauma, the long hours. I've done all of that. I've lived all that.

Speaker 1: 5:28

And personally, I went in there to help people. I wanted to bring people through the worst day of their life so they can get to this amazing end result. But in doing so, I found that my own health became a detriment. I was putting aside my own needs and my own values to help others, and I think a lot of people can resonate with that. So I got to a point where I was like, okay, this is not it. I'm not showing up for myself, I'm not showing up for my colleagues, I'm not showing up for the patients, so I need to change.

Speaker 1: 6:00

So I dove deep into all these ways that I could actually heal myself and I discovered, like functional medicine and circadian science, holistic practices, and I incorporated all these things to then get my own amazing results. Like these results weren't even good for a shift worker. Like it was amazing, even just for the gen pop person. Like I was competitive and performing really well in sports. I was showing up to my shifts of energy with life.

Speaker 1: 6:28

My quality of life was amazing and before I knew it, I had all of these people that were working around me asking how did you get that, chloe, how did you get that body, how do you have so much amazing energy when you rock up to work and why do you always have a smile on your face? So I really wanted to jump into helping those people. I was like huh, I know how to do this and I know how to do it well, I can help you guys as well. So I joined up with the Australian Women's Fitness Academy and dived into the coaching realm and that was great. But now I'm on this mission to also help organizations now support their staff through project development and essentially personalized health strategies. It kind of summarizes what I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 7:13

So that's what's drawn you into the world of holistic health and evidence-based coaching, especially for our shift working community. You touched on this and I really would like to just back over this particular point, because clearly you are that girl at work. You're the one that everyone looks at and goes. How does she do it? How can she look that amazing? How come she's smiling? How come she's got so much energy? How come she has a body like that? How come she can get to the gym and walk and do all of those sort of things? You're that person, aren't you, Chloe?

Speaker 1: 7:45

I did become that person unintentionally, just through my own health journey. To be honest, initially in my emergency nursing career I wasn't that person. I didn't even recognize myself. I didn't have much drive. Shifts were really hard, it was really hard to put a smile on your face, but after the work that I did it was just easy to show up that way and I guess you would know this as well, roger, when you're exuding that energy to attract that back, like people want a bit of that, people want a bit of that light that you're giving. So yeah, I did find that a lot of people did approach me with that.

Speaker 2: 8:17

So tell me, how long were you an emergency nurse for?

Speaker 1: 8:19

Yeah, so I've around six years.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Okay, now, before you started emergency nursing, how would you consider your life and lifestyle up until you started nursing?

Speaker 1: 8:31

I love that question. So before nursing I was still that person that wanted to give a lot to everyone. I was always the person that people would come to for advice. I was very active before shift work and before nursing, so I guess you could say I was an adrenaline junkie. I was always looking for competitive sports and how I can push the boundaries. I think a lot of people in the frontline arena are similar. We're all a little bit. A little bit. I don't even know how you would describe that.

Speaker 2: 9:02

I totally agree with that. The point that I wanted to make with that is that's how you were before you started shift work. Now talk about how long it took and the changes that occurred to Chloe Spring through shift work. What impact did shift work have on you in your energy levels, your health, your weight? How much more difficult it was for you to train, for you to just put that smile on your face. Where did you recognize that? You totally lost yourself when you reflected back and went. I've completely lost myself here.

Speaker 1: 9:35

It was really quick. It was within the first year of nursing as a graduate Just coming out into the field, just completely naive, to the bodily changes that you experience as well. Like, as you know, with night shifts and repetitive trauma exposure, your body starts to adapt that way, like your insulin sensitivity becomes skewed, your metabolic health becomes skewed, your sleep-wake cycles completely erratic. So yes, of course I was holding a bit more weight around my stomach, I was sluggish in the middle of the day when the sun is shining and I didn't have any drive to do anything. That all came on very quickly. So to that point as well, I guess that's where we see staff retention issues, right is? This is a young, fresh nurse that hasn't even been in the field for very long and I was already starting to feel the consequences of shift work, and this was in the first few months education did you have given to you about how to go about optimizing your life around shift work from your employer or your uni degree, or whatever it is that you actually did to get there?

Speaker 1: 10:45

I'm scratching my head. Honestly. If I wasn't the way that I was before, I don't know if I would have even dived into it further. I cannot recall any information that was actually provided to me to help me work through these issues. A lot of it came from conversations with other people and, like I said, through my own work as well. Like I seeked out dieticians and worked alongside them, I seeked out coaches, worked alongside them, and that was only because of my own drive to do so, only because I compared myself to what I was previously. But not everyone has that luxury either.

Speaker 2: 11:19

Now you look back. After you look back, you've gone. Who is this? Today, I'm completely losing myself. Now I know a lot of people, a lot of clients, and you coach clients as well and you have conversations with them, and we get to the stage where our clients say to us, oh, this is just shift work. And we get to the stage where our clients say to us, oh, this is just shift work. And this is a misconception, isn't it? It doesn't have to be that way. With what we are going to talk about today, this is the issues that we need to address. So now you, within 12 months or so, chloe recognizes she's completely lost herself.

Speaker 2: 11:51

But you had that realistic moment where you've gone. I've lost myself here. I need to do something about this. So you did. You showed up as the person that you needed to have educated you at the time, so you started educating yourself. I can guarantee you that 40 years ago, when I started shift work, I was definitely not taught how to go about doing shift work. I learned from the other people and when it was very difficult, I was just told this is what you signed up for.

Speaker 1: 12:21

It is a common misconception, right yeah, that fatigue is just part of the job, that you know, you manage it on an individual level, and just to toughen it up, oh my goodness Remember it was almost like the hazing days, wasn't it?

Speaker 2: 12:42

When the young nurse comes in and then the old nurses. You just got to toughen it up. It's just a classic gas line, and all of our supervisors, managers, do it to their staff on the daily. They just gaslight them by saying this is what you signed up for. Toughen up, princess. And that's what we get, and I think this is where we go wrong. Now, what were some of the biggest challenges that you, as Chloe Spring, face personally? Like it has an impact biologically and no secret. You're a female as well and I know for a fact that shift work impacts a lot more heavily on females than it does on males, and it's why I really favor my female clients and try and support my females as much as I possibly can because of those impacts. But for you yourself, chloe, that 12 months, what was some of the biggest challenges that you were facing yourself?

Speaker 1: 14:32

Why do I start? It's a massive list, especially like the initial stages, and thank you so much for bringing up even the women perspective as well. Like I definitely myself experienced hormonal dysfunction. So whether it came from inconsistent cycles, mood swings like the weight fluctuations as well, that was definitely something that I battled with as a woman and that was incredibly difficult. That also obviously came into the emotional dysregulation like that affected my social life. I always felt isolated from the rest of the world and of course, then my personal relationships as well felt that strain, especially with those mood swings Like you get so irritable and everyone knows night shift depression. Oh yeah, we've all been there.

Speaker 2: 15:16

Your libido crisis because you're just too tired. Everything just completely falls apart. For our poor ladies, dealing with an infradian rhythm on top of a dysregulated circadian rhythm is just a nightmare for them. Now you touched on this irregular cycle which causes your problems. Your hormonas are up and down, which impacts on your mood, impacts on your hormonal releases. You didn't even mention gas bloating, digestive issues that you suffer from.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Oh, the gut issues. We've all done the distended stomach on night shifts. You'd have these food sensitivities that would just come and go. They were so erratic. Yeah, the gut issues were awful. And just being constantly fatigued, I think that was the biggest one. Right, you'd sleep for as long as you can, but no matter how much sleep you got, you can never make back that sleep debt. You're always waking up tired, always waking up exhausted.

Speaker 2: 16:07

We know from research that females need more sleep than males need as well, so it does impact. Right now. This is going to bring us to our next point, and this is where we get into it. So you and I both have incredibly lived experience in the shift working world, so we get it from the employee. I was lucky because I was at a management level, so I can talk about it to look at it from a company perspective as well as look at it from an employee perspective as well. So I'm quite lucky there. Now, because we want to talk about the bigger picture here as to what we're doing. You've coached numerous clients, and so have I. You say we need to radically shift how we support our shift workers. So what does that look like in your eyes?

Speaker 1: 16:50

To me that would look like moving away from being reactive and becoming proactive, so actually addressing burnout before it happens. We can prevent it, like if we integrate health into the workplace culture, completely shift that culture, so making nutrition, recovery, movement all productivity tools rather than a personal luxury. I think the fact that it is so individual we touched on women, for example that is so individual. But we're not even touching on the fact that people have lives outside of shift work as well, like they have to obviously deal with the trauma and the circadian misalignment, but on top of that they also have lifestyle factors as well that implement into all of this. So there is a lot that goes into it. Health should not just be seen as a side project. This is central to retention, this is essential to safety, to the staff's long-term wellbeing.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Me personally. I think, looking at what I've looked at over the last five years with the research around shift work, we had a conversation prior to this podcast starting and I said, if I had my way, all 24-7 shift working environments would be stripped down and rebuilt as a 24-7 environment. And the reason why I say this is because we used to be eight to four Monday to Friday. Take policing and nursing out of it, but we're now up to around about somewhere between 18 and 22% of society as shift workers now by definition. And I think, if we look at we started at eight to four Monday to Friday, nine to five, and then we we had late night shopping on Fridays, and then it was late night shoppings on Thursdays and Saturday mornings and then it went to Saturday afternoon, sundays. Now it's night shift and private industry.

Speaker 2: 18:37

All we're doing is packing people into this 24-7 environment. We're just pushing them in. We need that shift filled. You can do that. We need that shift filled, rog. You do that. We need a day shift filled, chloe, you can do that. And we just are packing people into it with zero thought given to fatigue management around rostering to start off with about when do we start them? How much time do we give them after night shifts? How many nights should they be doing? What's the best rotation to cope with night shifts, et cetera. And we don't do this. What we do is we're just pushing them in and we are literally and I mean this quite categorically, we are literally killing our shift workers.

Speaker 1: 19:16

Like you said, there's no preventative strategies there None. We'll just push them in and then see what the consequences are there preventative strategies there? None, it's all, just push them in and then see what the consequences are.

Speaker 2: 19:24

There may be things in place after oh, that's right. After fact, well, kind of once I've broken you, they just discard you out on the trash and then they're looking for another one to get in and do it now. I could go down that line a whole lot, but you're the guest and we'll let you talk about, because we'll go down the rabbit hole. We'll go down the rabbit hole. I could literally go down this rabbit hole, and it's an important rabbit hole to go down as well.

Speaker 2: 19:48

It's no good saying that you've got the strategies in place to fix people afterwards. Why do you need those strategies in place to fix people afterwards if you're not actually putting preventative measures in place to prevent them from getting there A hundred percent? And now we talk about, in particular, policing and nursing, where there's a mass exodus from both of those employers at the moment mass, right. A lot of nurses are leaving, a lot of police are leaving and they're just bringing people in who aren't going to be there in five years' time. That's another conversation in itself. Now, why do you believe that shift worker health needs to be addressed at management level and not left solely onto the individual? We have to be responsible for ourselves, like you were. But why do you believe that shift worker health needs to be addressed at the management level?

Speaker 1: 20:34

Look, the system creates the conditions right. Like we said, the individual can only do so much within a poorly designed structure. Fatigue is a workplace safety issue, just like PPE. This should be managed at the organizational level Management. They have access to changing around the rosters, to breaking policies and actually allocating resources appropriately. Like real change will happen upstream, I guess if we support the workforce, you'll also see higher retention, reduced sick leave and less fatigue-related errors as well. It's a win for both the shift workers, but also for management as well.

Speaker 2: 21:13

I think we should just finish the podcast right there, because I think that's exactly what you said there. We need to make sure that that's the situation that occurs, moving forward right, because what we're doing is we're pushing people into these environments, but management has the power to actually fix a lot of these problems, because shift workers are working to what the management are actually pushing out and they have the power to change that. So what are the common out? And they have the power to change that. So what are the common misconceptions that managers have? Because managers are sitting there, you've got to remember that you, as a nurse, became a shift worker with zero education, so you, if you stayed in your profession, you would have become a manager, still with no education at all. So what do you believe that the common misconceptions are that managers or organizations still have at the moment when it comes to actually supporting shift workers?

Speaker 1: 22:08

We kind of touched on it before that fatigue is managed at an individual level. I was lucky enough to actually be able to have the awareness in the inside at that time, but if not, then I would have failed. I still would have been in that field, which would have led me to burnout. For instance, my clients right, so I can give them all the recommendations. I can give them recommendations for every single shift and they could follow it and execute it to a T. But if they then rock up to work and they get allocated to a high stress environment when they are showing signs that they should actually be recovering, then there's nothing we can do there. Or they get put in a position where they then have to do overtime but they should be recovering. These are all things that could be mitigated at a management level, not an individual level. There's only so much they can do, even if they really wanted to. But also, like we alluded to before, they might not have the awareness, they might not even have the education to carry that out.

Speaker 1: 23:06

How do you expect these exhausted people to be able to take on fatigue management when they are more exhausted than the general population? These people aren't going to go seek further education. They're just trying to survive. They're not trying to thrive at this point. So we need to provide that for them, we need to make it easier for them, we need to give them the recommendations to actually be able to follow this through. And just because they're not speaking up does not mean that they're fine. I think that that's a big thing as well is that if we have this quiet cohort, they're doing their work, it's all well and good, but they are suffering in silence. They're doing their work, it's all well and good, but they are suffering in silence. I know there is a lot of stigma out there that is causing shift workers not to speak up because they're still trying to tough it out. There is still that culture there. So if management are just waiting until someone sings out to them, it's not going to happen anytime soon until it's too late.

Speaker 2: 23:57

Now that point there that you've just made is a really, really solid point, because they are just toughing it out. Management are telling them this is what you signed up for. Toughen up, princess. So they feel like that is the case. And I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions, because I know when I first started shift work 40 years ago in my job, there was no way known was it anywhere near as difficult as it is now. And there are even more short staff now coping with a bigger workload and more issues and, as you said, they're exposed to the trauma.

Speaker 2: 24:29

Now you as a coach and me as a coach can put all of the perfect principles and science in place for an employee. We can help them. We can say to them right, this is what you need to do 100%, you need to go about it and this is what you do. See you later, see you next week, because you'll be absolutely crushing it.

Speaker 2: 24:46

And then they come back and say I had to do a double shift yesterday and I had to do overtime this day and oh, I had to work ED and then I had to do this and it was causing us all sorts of problems and it doesn't work, of problems and it doesn't work. It just simply doesn't work. So we end up with a lot of problems around that, and therein lies our massive problem from a management level that we need to rectify, and I don't know what the solution is, because they're so short staff but they won't spend the money to save the money for all of their staff. Let's talk about health advice. A lot of managers will look at traditional health advice and you and I know it's just irrelevant.

Speaker 2: 25:25

And why is that actually ineffective, or can it even be harmful for our shift workers?

Speaker 1: 25:31

Most of the health advice out there is for a nine to five lifestyle. Right. It's for a stable circadian rhythm. It's for regular meal timing. It's for consistent sleep cycles. That's not our shift workers. We're telling shift workers to sleep eight hours. Eat dinner at 6pm, go to bed by 10pm that's not their life.

Speaker 1: 25:50

It's not just irrelevant, it's actually shaming. This is creating guilt, it's creating confusion. Often it's creating worse health outcomes. Right? Some of the standardized practices like fasting for some shift workers, training to a certain calendar week and like you're not allowed a snack overnight or anything like that, like some of these things, can cause adrenal stress. It can cause blood sugar crashes and the mood instability, like the struggles that these people have to go through just because they're trying to fit this box. These are people that want to excel. These are people that are putting themselves in environments that push the human form. They want to do well, they want to perform well, but they're giving these recommendations that don't even suit their structure. I'm really passionate about these topics. I realise I'm yelling a lot at you, roger.

Speaker 2: 26:36

No, no, it's your passion and environment. That's the most important thing. I think what we also need to be very mindful of is the science that applies to the nine to fiver as a general rule doesn't apply to a shift worker, and we need to have guidelines. We need people like yourself, like myself, out there, educating the shift worker not to say this is what you got to do, or shame, shame, shame. But this is what the science tells us and this is why. So, if a female comes to me and says to me I'm putting on weight, I'd say to them oh, you need to be in a calorie deficit.

Speaker 2: 27:09

But the problem that we have is we end up with situations where they are on their night shift, eating overnight, even though their calories are equated, but we don't metabolize and score calories the same way. I will say to you optimally, we fast overnight, but then I'm going to make recommendations as to the best way to go about doing that as well, so that people are still fueled and lasting overnight. That's one of the biggest problems that we actually have in today. We can't apply it. When they say you can eat it after eight o'clock, it doesn't make any difference. I think that's dangerous in our shift working world, because I think if our shift workers are eating after 8, 9 o'clock at night, the science is changing around this in a very, very big way and we learned that once melatonin is elevated, we don't actually metabolize and store nutrients the same way and in fact, our BMR can be reduced by 200, 250 calories overnight. No, they need to factor that in.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Look at the nursing stations they don't.

Speaker 2: 28:07

You're not supposed to add 2,000 calories.

Speaker 1: 28:12

Oh no, but how would you know? Unless you looked into this right? Because, like I just said, a nurse's station you knew exactly what I was talking about, because that is a cultural expectation that you smack overnight. This is not just about providing education. It's providing awareness as to why this is not the best idea and why we need to change this culture.

Speaker 2: 28:30

Researchers are working hard on particularly this area around police stations, fire stations and nursing stations. I know that nurses have drawers that have all the chocolates and the lollies and everything else that goes into it, because the patient's families are bringing them in saying, oh, you've done a great job looking after Nan. Thanks very much. Here's a box of chocolates. No one ever brings a platter of fruit, do they?

Speaker 1: 28:55

Exactly Where's our complex carbs? Where's our protein?

Speaker 2: 28:58

We don't get that. This is the problem. We've identified that we've got to be careful. What I would tell a nine to five client compared to what I need to tell to a shift working client can be quite detrimental. There are people who have high energy jobs that need fuel overnight as well. So we can't say to them here's the blanket. You got to fast, you got to do this or you can't do that Now. So how can our leaders in these areas, our managers, start to tailor health and wellbeing support to meet the needs of their 24-7 teams?

Speaker 1: 29:32

We have been touching on it right, Like education, education, education, but not just giving them the blanket terms, not just copying the nine to five wellness programs, but just providing the awareness as to why, Like start teaching them circadian science, start teaching them hormonal timing, recovery cycles, like all of these amazing things to actually allow people to understand why it's important not just for their performance but their own wellbeing and longevity. And personalizing support, like the information that the individual can actually give managers will provide the best course of action, because not one size fits all right. And also that culture shift, like normalizing recovery as part of the job. It's about giving staff that voice. It's about, like the wellness check-ins like once every six months on a wellness day, but like running it regularly, allowing them to be able to voice consistently hey, I'm struggling and this is why.

Speaker 2: 30:30

I think the first thing they need to do is ask the question of experts in the area. I honestly believe that health and wellbeing and HR in organisations that are 24-7 environments need to ask the question of experts in the area. This is my workplace. What is there that I can actually do? How can I support my staff Instead of sitting there thinking you know how to do it right, because this is one of the biggest problems that we have. There's organisations, there's people out there, there's yourself, there's myself. There's the University of Queensland that are doing great work in this area as well. The managers need to be approaching. It's no good us going and knocking on doors saying we can help you because they're closed mind. They won't do it. They just won't, but I think higher up, they need to be looking at it. My answer to that would literally be ask the question.

Speaker 1: 31:23

Ask the question. Ask the right people the question.

Speaker 2: 31:25

Ask the right people the question.

Speaker 1: 31:26

Ask your staff and then ask the experts in the field as well. It's not a do-it-yourself project. You don't have to have all the answers as management. That's why you outsource, that's why you bring people in to educate your staff. That's why you create that awareness. I'm saying teach them all this. I'm not saying you, as the manager, have to teach them. There are so many people at your door knocking to say I want to help. Let them in. Let them teach your staff. You'll see the results. You'll save a lot of money doing so too.

Speaker 2: 31:52

What does a culture of recovery look like in a shift working environment? I guess we've probably touched on that to start off with, but if I ask the question, they've got to get the experts in. They've got to spend the money on it to save the money, don't they?

Speaker 1: 32:04

I guess if they see recovery as a priority just as much as the KPIs, that's when they're going to reap the benefits of both. They both help each other too. But it's about shifting that mindset into oh, we just need to hit these KPIs, hit these targets to oh, this will actually help increase the KPIs. Open your mind. You said it before. Don't be so closed-minded. It's as simple as that. Open your mind to. There are other ways that you can actually help your staff, but also help your organization as well.

Speaker 2: 32:34

Spot on. If a manager is listening right now, where would you ask them to start?

Speaker 1: 32:38

I think the unions are a good place to start as well. Like a lot of them, have a lot of people in the space or even links to experts in the field as well, so you can bring on them, because they're always going to have the staff's wellbeing at the forefront of their mind. But yeah, just go into these conferences as well. People like yourself, like you're always educating at these places and these big stages. Go see what they're talking about, see if that could be implemented in your own workforce as well. I think if you just listen to the people that are knocking on the door, that are asking to have meetings with workplace health and safety, that are trying to enforce this new legislation, if you just sit down and listen to them, they can actually provide you with some really amazing recommendations.

Speaker 2: 33:17

And simple. That's a really good answer. I hope you're enjoying the show. If you are, please don't forget to rate and review once you've finished. This helps the show's reach enormously. And have you got my free ebook the Best Way to Eat on Night Shift? Well, this is a comprehensive guide to the overnight fast, why we should fast and how to best go about it. I've even included a few recipes to help you. I've put a link to the ebook in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 33:47

And are you really struggling with shift work and feel like you're just crawling from one shift to the next? Well, I've got you. If you would like to work with me, I can coach you to thrive, not just survive, while undertaking the rigours of 24-7 shift work. I also conduct in-house live health and wellbeing seminars where I will come to your workplace and deliver evidence-based information to help your wellbeing team to reduce unplanned leave and increase productivity in your workplace. I've put the links in the show notes to everything mentioned. You can find me at ahealthyshiftcom or on Instagram at a underscore healthy, underscore shift. Now let's get back to the show. You've worked in emergency care yourself, so let's just transfer a little bit across, because this is a really important topic as well. So you've just transfer a little bit across, because this is a really important topic as well. So you've worked in emergency care and understand trauma firsthand. How does unresolved trauma affect shift workers long-term?

Speaker 1: 34:48

So long-term exposure with trauma is seen physically and mentally. Especially as someone in emergency services, I routinely face high stress and traumatic incidences and over time this does take a toll on your mental and physical health. So, mental wise, the most common we see is burnout, like that's a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. This is all caused by prolonged stress. It's overwhelming fatigue, it's detachment. It's the person that has a reduced sense of accomplishments. It often overlaps with compassion fatigue. So you see those people that rock up to their shift and they're completely numb to any traumatic incident, that's the person with burnout. It's actually really interesting. I did see that up to about 50% of medical staff, especially since COVID, has some sort of signs of burnout. That is massive. That is a major health concern. Imagine 50% of the workforce rocking up, being completely numb, being completely checked out. These are the people that are leaving work early. These are the people that you're not retaining.

Speaker 1: 35:56

I do also want to touch on as well, especially with prolonged trauma exposure, is there are higher rates of stress-related conditions in especially frontline workers than there is the general population. So there was some large surveys done in Australia with emergency services and roughly one-third of them actually reported high psychological distress, and this one blew my mind. About 10% of frontline workers showed some sort of form of PTSD. That is compared to the general population at about 4%, that is a massive difference. And these are the people that have intrusive memories. They have night terrors, hypervigilance, avoidance they can all impair daily functioning, let alone high risk work. It also normally co-occurs with things like anxiety, depression, even substance misuse as well. I've actually never shared this on a platform as well, but I can also really relate to this.

Speaker 1: 36:54

In recent years I myself was actually diagnosed with ptsd following two consecutive traumatic events. I went from this bubbly person If anything, I was a bit too happy when it came to traumatic incidences. I was the person that you wanted in a recess room. I got the job done. I put a smile on your face, all happy, go lucky. And then just one day I just snapped and I couldn't go into the hospital ground without having panic attacks. I started to isolate myself. I was very fortunate that I was actually able to access psychology and work through all of that and have been able to triumphantly get on the other side.

Speaker 1: 37:30

But I know firsthand that it can happen to anyone Like. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone out there, and I was someone who was so aware. That's only the mental part of it, like the physical body has a massive response to ongoing trauma as well. So, for instance, ongoing exposure to trauma can also manifest in the physical body, not just the mental. So you're completely out of whack. Your autonomic nervous system is completely dysfunctional, so you're in a constant fight or flight state. Ptsd patients.

Speaker 2: 38:07

Let me just help you a little bit here, because I'm someone who's been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression myself, and I think it becomes your new normal. But you don't realize just how dysfunctional you actually are as a person. Is that fair?

Speaker 1: 38:22

Yeah, 100%. I think even just the physical parts of it as well were completely surprising to me. Your heart rate becomes elevated, your HRV is constantly low, your body gives you signs that you are emotionally struggling, that you're mentally struggling. These people that are constantly exposed to trauma, they have cardiac strain. These are the people that end up with hypertension, with heart disease. This isn't something that is just a mental diagnosis and you deal with that in therapy. These are things that, if they continue to be unaddressed, they can actually manifest into real physical problems. Early death that's wild and that's just from constant trauma exposure.

Speaker 2: 39:02

Fortunately, though and I'll say this to you in the role as a nurse, working in emergency care, and also in police and paramedics and fire and those type of roles, we are going to be exposed to trauma, and it's unavoidable because we are the people that have to deal with that trauma. But what we do need and this is where I'll step in and just help you out here is we need to have strategies and tools in place to continually bring ourselves back from that trauma exposure. We're going to be exposed to it all the time, and that's unavoidable. But one of the things that we do need to do and the fortunate thing that we have in these jobs and I mean the really fortunate thing that we have in these jobs you can be moved out of that department and go to another department. In the police, you can be moved out of that area and go to another. As a paramedic, you can be moved into an office or go to another area as well. What management needs to be doing? They need to be vigilant and watching these people who are struggling.

Speaker 2: 40:07

Now I want to make an observation, which is something that I learned. I'm up and about. I was always happy and smiling and everything was really good. That can be depression, because what happens is you are in avoidance of actually dealing with it, because I remembered that I was diagnosed with depression and I went me Roger, no way, I'm not diagnosed with depression. You don't even know what you're talking about. And when it was actually flagged with me high-functioning depression I understood that. What happens is you deal with everything that you've got to do within your job, but then you distract yourself outside of the job by being this happy-go-lucky, up-and-about type of person that is always dealing with stuff and being busy and everything else. From the outside to everybody else, it goes oh my God, this Roger, he's doing fantastic, he's doing really well.

Speaker 1: 40:59

It's interesting, even when you're talking about the symptoms and experiences that you were going through, Roger. They sound very similar to burnout, which goes hand in hand with shift work. It's almost like we're just on a track to go towards burnout or depression, whatever you want to title it.

Speaker 2: 41:13

You can call it burnout. There's different levels of stress and I think if we look at if you were to listen to the podcast that I did with Dr Michelle Finneran how she talks about the different stages and then she gets all the way down to compassion fatigue, is worse than burnout. You get to burnout and then you cross over into compassion fatigue and once someone and particularly nurses, oncology nurses and emergency department nurses can really be diagnosed with compassion fatigue and that's really bad. That's not just bad, that is really bad. That's beyond burnout, compassion fatigue. You've got to get help, and really urgent help around compassion fatigue and our poor nurses do really, really suffer from this, in particular, nurses, police.

Speaker 2: 41:58

I can see how police get compassion fatigue. Now you might think, oh, we don't nurses police. I can see how police get compassion fatigue. Now you might think, oh, we don't care for patients. But I can tell you, answering phone call after phone call, from moron after moron, you do get to the stage where you just don't care anymore. You've done everything that you can possibly do, you've gone beyond burnt out. You're now in compassion fatigue state and I think that's something that we do need. But this is where I say and I've just recorded a podcast with an actual police psychologist about what to look for in your colleagues.

Speaker 2: 42:28

Don't look for the person that's miserable and sad. Look for the person that's happy and up and about and keep an eye on them, because they may be the depressed one, which is really, really important. Let's pivot off that. You often talk about training for resilience right, and I've seen you training for resilience as well. So how does building physical resilience help to protect us against burnout and our energy crashes? Because you would think, exercise, burning more energy it's going to make me worse.

Speaker 1: 42:56

Essentially, I see physical resilience as your body's ability to just recover from stress. So, whether that is a workout, a tough shift or a critical incident, it's more like stress inoculation, right? Like training your body to handle controlled stress so that you become more adaptable. Then, when real life chaos hits, you're prepared. I saw recently right that shift workers are expected to die 10 to 15 years earlier. Like, our bodies are not designed to do shift work. That's it. So if there was some sort of way that we could train for shift work to be able to mitigate those negative effects of shift work, then why wouldn't we do it Like? That's what I see training as. That's why I implement it personally for my clients, because it's not about the aesthetics, it's about allowing them to become physically resilient so they're fit for their shift.

Speaker 2: 43:49

Yeah, very good Fit for shift is super important for everyone, because I know, listening to some of the clients and some of the people that you no doubt talk to as well, which are women, middle-aged women, who have really got to the stage where they've almost given up because they know that they can't do anything at all and, oh, if only they understood it's baby steps and turning things around that can really make a massive difference in their life. Reigning for that and also going back to our managers, management, hr need to be approaching places that do fatigue management, that can look at their rosters and structure their rosters and structure their environments so that they do optimally survive in this shift working world. Majority of research that's been done on shift workers has been done with lack of education for the shift worker. But what I love is what I'm seeing at the moment is more and more researchers. I'm lucky because I use my platform to talk to researchers to get their research out into the field so that people learn and understand it, because otherwise it just sits in a journal gathering dust on a shelf, and we don't want that. We want it out right. So what I do now is I talk to these researchers, find them, talk to them, get the information out there.

Speaker 2: 45:07

I honestly believe that in years to come 10, 20, 30 years there will be more shift workers, because we're one in five now. It could be one in four moving forward. In certain countries in the world it is more than one in four already. But we're in a position now where we need to educate environments on how to go about it, from management level which is the whole core of this conversation to fatigue manage so that their KPIs are being met from a different angle, so that you're actually putting your staff turning up, they're not off on unplanned leave or extended leave, are being met from a different angle, so that you're actually your staff turning up, they're not off on unplanned leave or extended leave or burnt out or stressed or on work cover or they've had an accident in the workplace or you've lost staff because they can't cope with it or things like that. We can't have that happening. We've got to be addressing it from a fatigue perspective so that you do get a more productive environment, and I think that's a key there in itself.

Speaker 2: 46:03

What would you do? You've worked in a shift work environment. You've got lift experience. You know what it's like, what kind of movement or training practices would you recommend specifically for shift workers? You can't say oh, you've got to go to the gym six days a week, you've got to run five days a week, you must do this and you've got to do four F45s. It just doesn't work for a shift worker. What would you say?

Speaker 1: 46:25

With my training specifically, it's all about timing. Timing is the core crux of everything. It's about providing them flexibility to be able to do their workouts whatever. That is dependent on their shifts and also dependent on their recovery and energy levels. It could be two to four sessions a week and predominantly with my training, it's strength training because of all the positive benefits that you get from strength training from muscle mass, so like increased energy levels, better sleep time, better metabolic health. Also, you burn calories more effectively, so decrease BMI.

Speaker 1: 47:01

So I lean more towards strength training with my clients for that reason. But, like I said, it is only around their recovery and their energy levels and their shifts. It's well and good to say to people oh, you need to work out on Monday and then rest on Tuesday, back in on Wednesday. That does not work for a shift worker because they might be doing a whole run of nights. They're not able to do that. So to be able to give them the flexibility, provide them the workouts that they can do it when they can and when it suits their physical recovery and their mental recovery too.

Speaker 1: 47:33

So a big thing that I do implement with my clients is don't overtrain, like match your intensity to recovery. So if they're not strength training, they'll be doing some low impact mobility work or walking, just getting outside, just moving their body. And you can be strategic with this too. Like if you were to be coming off night shifts, for example, and you wanted to get your body back into normal circadian rhythm. You could actually use your training and movement to help install this in your body. So if you're getting up and you're working out during the day, then this is telling your body hey, I'm awake now, so you're going to be alert during that time, and then, when it comes to nighttime, your body's actually going to go into a deeper stage of sleep. So we can use this strategically as well. So I guess, like if we're seeing training more as a supportive factor rather than a punishment, I think shift workers can go a really long way with that.

Speaker 2: 48:25

Oh, totally, and take the pressure off yourself. The most underrated exercise? Well, actually the three, but the three extremely underrated exercises for a shift worker. Number one is walking. Just full stop, end of story. Just getting up, getting yourself out and taking yourself for a walk. You don't have to smash yourself with running. People say, oh, I'm gaining weight, walking's not going to help it. Wrong Walking is going to make a big difference, right, Because you're moving and you're telling your body it's awake time, so it's time to metabolize and store nutrients the way we do in the daytime. So there's one way. So it's time to metabolize and store nutrients the way we do in the daytime. So there's one way. The other exercise is you have quite rightly pointed out the resistance training is imperative for everybody, right? Not just shift workers but everybody. But don't think that you've got to go into the gym and do six sessions a week, three sessions a week as a shift worker. If you're doing three full body sessions and hitting all your muscle groups, all kudos to you, as well as long.

Speaker 1: 49:20

If you're doing three full body sessions and hitting all your muscle groups.

Speaker 2: 49:22

All kudos to you as well, as long as you're recovering. Well, yeah, as long as you're recovering. And we've got to be smart about it. And we've got people to understand that we don't finish a 12-hour night shift and call in at the gym on the way home and try and hit PBs right, that's just suicide, right? We don't do that. We've got to understand that our body is highly stressed, even though we're not, and we're going to open ourselves right up to injury and all sorts of problems. We don't want that.

Speaker 2: 49:46

The other thing is, we want to make sure that coming out of night shift and I talk about this all the time for the two days coming out of night shift you quite rightly and quite accurately pointed out, exercise can be a tool to cue your circadian rhythm into the fact that we're back in our daytime cycle. So, instead of actually lying there in bed going I really don't feel like this get up, get out in the light, take yourself for a walk. Your body will function so much better and you're telling it it's daytime and we will sleep much better tonight. Love that. And list training is the other one that I talk about.

Speaker 2: 50:22

I always talk about list training for shift workers coming out of night shift to burn those elevated triglycerides out of the bloodstream as well Extremely important because in night shift you have elevated fat in your bloodstream not only from what you're eating, but just as a natural process overnight. So what we want to do is burn those out before they get parked on our hips and our stomach and everywhere else. Pedaling on a bike or being on a treadmill at 65% maximum heart rate for 30 minutes two days in a row beautiful.

Speaker 1: 50:54

And no strain on your cognitive awareness too, like you're not actually causing more strain on your body, like that's what we're saying with physical movement. It shouldn't be an additional stressor. This is a supportive tactic.

Speaker 2: 51:05

On your days off, after your night shift or your rest days, that's the day to go in and get into that sympathetic state while you're resistance training and really train your body. For that you will feel so much better. I know people don't think that they haven't got the energy to train. They don't realise that training gives them the energy. That's the problem.

Speaker 1: 51:24

Exactly yeah, there's never a new circle, unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 51:28

So, on that note, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how shift workers are supported today, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 51:36

Oh my gosh, that magical wand.

Speaker 2: 51:38

You know how to use a baseball bat. It's got to be a wand, all right, you can't beat a manager up.

Speaker 1: 51:43

Oh no, okay. Okay, magical wand, I would remove fatigue as being the norm for shift workers. Like in my perfect world, shift workers are seen as the most elite in the workforce. They have the recommendations, they have the strategies to actually be able to not only succeed in shift work, but actually be able to optimize their life outside of shift work as well. They are not the most exhausted individuals. These are the people that know how to tackle night shifts properly. These are the people that know how to bounce back and jump back into circadian rhythms when necessary. These are the people that the rest of the workforce are actually envious of because they know how to perform. That is my dream.

Speaker 2: 52:23

I'm going to put it this way. I think you made a really good point. Then 99% of our shift workers actually know how to go about doing shift work. It's management practices that destroy it and it is it's management practice. It's the way the roster's done. The short staff and not having a sufficient staff to cope with running the organisation, with what you're actually doing, management are doing it from a position of lack of education around. You've got to understand that if you keep pushing your staff to a burnout level, you lose them and then you don't have them. It's that simple.

Speaker 1: 52:57

Sorry to interject, roger. There are fatigue management systems in place, but a lot of them are subjective tools. Right, and we've spoken about already that there is this culture, this stigma shift workers can't speak up. It's seen as weak, it's seen as you're not being stoic enough. So the fact that we're depending our fatigue management on shift workers voicing their concerns, it's not going to work. I love that some organizations have implemented some rostering systems and being able to protect breaks and things like that. But one if the shift workers aren't speaking up, then that's at a detriment. But two, this is organizational wide. Why is not everyone doing this? Why is this not best practice across all states?

Speaker 2: 53:39

And why aren't other organisations looking at that organisation and saying how are you going about it? Because we want to learn from what you're doing. Because they're not aware and because they're closed-minded and they won't actually approach. Like you know, victoria Police has got 18,000 sworn members and a union. Why isn't the union approaching and going to someone like me saying, okay, what is it that we should be doing? You've got lived experience of 40 years. What is it that we should be doing?

Speaker 2: 54:07

I would say to them you need to get a fatigue management organization in. Oh no, that won't work. How do you know it won't work? It's not working for you now. You've got a thousand people off on work cover and you've got 800 unfilled positions or the other way around. Whatever it is, it's not working for you now. So you might want to be looking at some of those things as well. I think it's important. I can only use that, but I know nurses are in a real pickle as well at the moment Short-staffed, it's not good enough. I will say this to people in a shift working organization. I'll make it very, very clear to you it's a them problem, it's not a you problem. When they're short-staffed and you've got to do overtime. That's a them problem, that's not a you problem. And the more you turn up, the less they're going to do about it.

Speaker 1: 54:50

Yes, can we please, please, stop rewarding exhaustion Like hands down. Can we stop? Can we stop saying, oh yeah, like we're going to give you all this double time and things like that if you push through, if you're tough enough to do it. Can we stop, because these people are the ones that are going to burn out sooner.

Speaker 2: 55:08

Yeah, that's right. And then you break them. And what do you do with them? Once you've broken them, discard them. You don't care. And this is where the staff have got to understand. Look, I know, chloe, from nurses that I've coached as well, that nurses in particular have a real moral for their colleagues at work. They feel so bad that they're letting the rest of the team down if they don't turn up. Like if you're working a day shift and the afternoon shift comes in and they're short and the head nurse or the manager goes to you Chloe, can you work afternoon shift because your girls here are short? You think, oh, I can't leave them by themselves, I have to work.

Speaker 1: 55:46

Yeah, it is this big. Exactly what if staff actually had proof that I actually cannot work overtime because my body is telling me otherwise? Yeah, like that is this sort of.

Speaker 2: 55:58

I can't do this. No, it's a complete sentence I'm not doing it. And the more you do it, the more they're going to allow you to get away with it. That's the thing.

Speaker 1: 56:05

It is difficult.

Speaker 1: 56:05

They do have to go against a whole cultural shift.

Speaker 1: 56:08

I guess I'll touch on now, like what we're doing to help support staff and organizations through this sort of dilemma as well is we're closely working with Bourne University to actually show that there is a system that will be able to help shift workers and their management to be able to not only manage fatigue but prevent it as well.

Speaker 1: 56:28

So imagine if management could actually see when a staff member is struggling with fatigue or showing signs of burnout and they could jump in early, right on the spot, and be able to have alerts yeah, be able to reallocate them or not push them into overtime because they are actually showing signs that they cannot do this shift. That's the sort of thing that we want to prove with bond university and then be able to bring that to organizations to help them out as well, because it's all well and good for us to say to shift workers you know, say no like don't push through the extra shift, but I get it, I've been there like you're not going to say to shift workers you know, say no like don't push through the extra shift, but I get it, I've been there Like you're not going to say no when there's this whole cultural shift and you don't have evidence that you're struggling inside, like your body is telling you. But management can't see that. But what if they had to see what your body is doing?

Speaker 2: 57:11

Basically, what you're saying is a software that literally is fatigue, managing staff all the time Like a lot of truck driving companies have stuff like this and you can see what people have worked and their hours and that they're hitting a red line and that's not the time to say to them I need you to do a double shift tonight. That's it. I think that's a really good approach and it definitely needs to come in and be implemented so that people looking at these I've got to tell you in policing and nursing you'd say there's no room for AI. I totally dispute that.

Speaker 1: 57:45

Who's saying that they need to come into the modern day and age?

Speaker 2: 57:49

AI. If you could put your enterprise bargaining agreement into AI and you could also and here's something for someone who's listening, because I don't have the intelligence to do it, but I'd love to be part of it If you could put your EBA into AI and also put your staff requests into AI, and you could also put in fatigue management practice into AI and have it write your roster for you. Your roster could be written in half an hour instead of having someone full-time trying to work out the roster, because it would be structuring every parameter in it. Now it might get to the stage where it goes I've got to Friday and I've got no one to work. Okay, then you'll look at that. But the rest of the roster could have been written completely by AI.

Speaker 2: 58:34

With fatigue management practices in place, these swing shifts for nurses have got to go full stop right. Why they are doing swing shifts in nursing and policing is beyond me. It's highly dangerous in an area where it's a medical field that you're actually looking after people. I don't understand that. Chloe. For shift workers that are listening, what message would you want them to walk away with today from this?

Speaker 1: 58:59

I guess all I can say is you're not broken. Your body is trying to do its best in an unnatural system. But also your health is not a side project. It is the foundation of everything else that you make possible. If you start to put in the work, if you start to actually put aside the time to concentrate on it, you're not only going to help your performance at work, but in every single day of your life. And just know that there are people working in the background that are trying to make the system that you work in better. We're trying to make those environments better for you. We are doing the work, we are gaining the evidence now to provide to these organizations so they can't turn a blind eye anymore. And the more that you speak up, the more that you speak to people like myself and Roger and the unions, then they can't ignore us. So if we have enough evidence behind us to support it, which is what we are doing, they won't be able to ignore this voice.

Speaker 2: 59:52

Totally agree. The other thing that I say to staff as well in a world of word cover, today I would be putting reports in of near misses going up the line and because when you do that, you've got to come up with a solution. I'd say the fact that I've done three double shifts this week or this fortnight is unacceptable and you should be putting in a near miss injury in the workplace and putting that up the line. I also think people will call me a troublemaker for this, but I also think that what staff need to be doing is they need to be pushing it up a line to make them aware of people like yourself myself, the University of Queensland, bond University, with what you're doing and everything else, because without that, management are not aware they're not aware.

Speaker 1: 1:00:35

Yeah, exactly Like they don't know what to fix unless they know what the problem is.

Speaker 2: 1:00:39

Well, that's exactly right.

Speaker 1: 1:00:40

We need to tell them.

Speaker 2: 1:00:41

They can say, oh, we've got no staff and we've got this, but I need you to work this double and I need you back tomorrow morning and you've got to start at 3 o'clock in the morning and do this. It's just unacceptable. Now we can't be doing that. Now people would say I did it for 40 years. I totally understand it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:57

Completely ingrained in you, but there's some people in management that haven't even lived it.

Speaker 2: 1:01:02

No, never looked at it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:03

But they don't understand. So you know, we do have to talk to them like they don't understand because unfortunately they have no lived experience, and that's fine, let's just make them aware.

Speaker 2: 1:01:11

Yeah, just make them aware. And what I want people to understand is there's no shame in asking the question and for the shift worker, you've got to put it up a line to say there's a problem here that needs addressing. Can you ask the question? Can you approach Chloe, approach Roger? Can you approach these people to get them to have a look at what we're doing and give us some guidelines to help us to function?

Speaker 2: 1:01:36

I think that's really important that that actually happens, because so many shift workers I know I've got my following, you've got your following to help us to function. I think that's really important that that actually happens, because so many shift workers I know I've got my following, you've got your following they don't put things up the line. They just sit there and think, oh, it's not worth it, they won't do anything about it. They can't do anything about it if you don't actually bring it to their attention. Every single webinar and seminar that I've done has been put up the line by someone who follows me on social media. It's been put up the line. That shows that places have money for this stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:02:03

Yeah, exactly, and we're at an amazing time right now where there is a lot of pressure on organizations to make change to protect their stuff. There is so much more awareness like this is the time, guys, that we actually need to implement these changes. These are times that we have to start knocking on this door, because they're not going to be able to ignore us anymore. There's too much pressure on them.

Speaker 2: 1:02:22

And once you produce the evidence and say this is the situation relighting. This is the situation where your fatigue management practice and here's the evidence. If they ignore it, they're leaving themselves vulnerable. Chloe, let's wrap it up what's one negotiable in your personal routine, one negoti-negotiable in your own personal routine today that helps you to stay grounded and well.

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

I sound like a hippie. Getting out in nature, roger, literally every single day, without fail, no matter what the weather is. I am outside, I'm getting that natural light, no matter how dull it is, and that just helps my body get back into that circadian rhythm or even just regulate my mood as well. I'm a much better person when I'm outside and I'm breathing fresh air. I recommend it to everyone. I sound like a hippie. I'm out there hugging the trees every day.

Speaker 2: 1:03:08

What do you think tree huggers are so well, look, don't get me wrong here. The thing is we underestimate the value of what we actually get from our sunlight. The things that we get from our sunlight are all of that light, that green light, that yellow light, that orange light, that red light, and then we have the light that we can't see, which is the infrared, the ultraviolet. It's also good for our health, and the one tip that I would give and you say the non-negotiable mine is early light every single day and I sleep very well at night.

Speaker 1: 1:03:39

Like a baby and it's as simple as light light exposure. Use it as a tool. It's free, which is so good. I should focus. We love that.

Speaker 2: 1:03:47

But you know, you're probably a bit lucky being up on the Gold Coast because you get a little bit more than I see, Dan, here in Melbourne, but it is still there for us at times. But even so, just getting outside, even on a rainy day, you're still getting 10,000 lux of light, which is still resetting your circadian rhythm and still providing you with all of that fantastic light. Chloe, where can people contact you or connect with you and learn more about what it is that you're actually doing?

Speaker 1: 1:04:13

Yes, I would love to connect with you all, so please reach out. Instagram is always going to be the best place, so, at ChloeSpring92., I'm also recently on LinkedIn, so you can always connect with me there as well. But any feedback, anything that you are struggling with, please let me know. When it comes to shift work, because the more that I know, the more that I can bring to organizations as well and be a voice for you all. So any feedback is appreciated.

Speaker 2: 1:04:37

I love that. If there's anything that Chloe has said that's resonated with you, or if you've got any questions about how you would like to go, I'm quite sure that Chloe would have strategies on how to approach your management. By all means, reach out to Chloe through her DMs or email or whatever there is that you can do, because she would be thrilled to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 1:04:58

I should also mention as well if there's any organizations or any management that want to reach out as well. Where we are at the moment with the project development to implement these systems is we're in the funding stage, so we're currently trying to get investors on board and organizations that would be interested on implementing these strategies to help prevent fatigue amongst their staff. They'll be one of the first to actually integrate software as well. It's an amazing opportunity that is backed by evidence, backed by science. That is backed by the university as well. So if you want to get in contact with me, please do so as well. Like I said, linkedin. My name Chloe Spring.

Speaker 2: 1:05:32

Fantastic, chloe, well done. I wish you all the very best with what you're doing, because you are trying to make a massive difference from management level, and that's where it is going to start Now I do have one final question that I have to ask, and I always ask this question to every single guest that I have on the podcast. I've just won a billion dollars and I'm very, very grateful for you to come onto the podcast, right? So what I do to every guest that I have is I build them a holiday home or I buy them a home anywhere in the world that they want, but you have to live in it for six months, chloe. Now you can go buy yourself, I don't care what you do, but you've got to live in it for six months, because it would be a horrible waste to build it and have no one in it. Where am I building it for you?

Speaker 1: 1:06:16

Well, let's go Costa Rica. I like the community vibes there. I love that. There's a big thing about whole foods that it just seems like a really good culture and community to be a part of, and there's surf, there's rainforest. Oh, I can tell I'll live there more than six months. Roger, did you want me to send you my bank details after this, or?

Speaker 2: 1:06:35

No, no, I'm building it. I'm just going to give you the key. Oh, you're building it.

Speaker 1: 1:06:38

Oh, thank you, thank you, okay, I'm building.

Speaker 2: 1:06:40

the whole lot I'll send you the coordinates then. Send me the coordinates. We'll work on the plan. Obviously, it's going to be up on a hill overlooking the ocean somewhere. Chloe, thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge in this area with us and thoughts around how shift workers can better thrive and not just survive Shift workers. You're doing your absolute best. We're here to try and help management, to help you to thrive in yourself. Thanks, chloe, really appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 1: 1:07:09

Thank you, Roger.

Speaker 2: 1:07:10

And there you have it. That's Chloe Spring. Now the point that I want to make to you shift workers here, before you turn this off, is, as Chloe said at the end, there you, the shift worker, are doing everything right that you can possibly do when you get guidance around what you can do optimally. But it needs addressing at management level, and I reiterated that it's up to you, the shift worker, to put it up the line to get people like Chloe, like myself, to come into these workplaces and guide management on best practice around managing shift workers to improve everything in their own environment.

Speaker 2: 1:07:48

Thanks heaps for actually listening to that podcast. I really appreciate it and if you got anything out of it, forward it on, forward it up the line to your manager, put it in an email, put a link into it and say, hey, you might want to have a listen to this at some stage, because that's the goal to try and get people to be aware that it's okay to reach out for help, because there is current science, there are numerous resources and there are organizations that are out there that are more than prepared to actually help you to manage your shift working staff better. That wasn't available years ago, it is available now and you really should take advantage of it and start asking these questions, because science is evolving at a rapid rate of knots and I think it's something that we really need to be looking at. Catch you on the next one. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 2: 1:08:41

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you get notified whenever a new episode is released. It would also be ever so helpful if you could leave a rating and review on the app you're currently listening on. If you want to know more about me or work with me, you can go to ahealthyshiftcom. I'll catch you on the next one.