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A Healthy Shift
A Healthy Shift Podcast with Roger Sutherland
Shift work and night shift can be brutal—but they don’t have to be.
Join veteran shift worker Roger Sutherland, a former law enforcement officer with 40+ years of experience in Melbourne, Australia, and a certified nutritionist.
In A Healthy Shift, Roger shares evidence-based nutrition, health, and well-being strategies to help shift and night shift workers boost their energy, improve sleep, and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
If you're ready to thrive—not just survive—while working shifts, this podcast is your go-to resource for a healthier, happier life.
A Healthy Shift
[256] - Where Is My Shift Work Education and Support?
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Feeling Burnt Out from Shift Work? You’re Not Alone — And It’s Not Your Fault.
Most organisations expect 24/7 workers to navigate tough schedules without any guidance on how to protect their health.
After 40+ years as a police officer, experiencing every type of shift pattern imaginable, I’ve seen firsthand how this lack of knowledge wrecks lives.
That’s why I created practical, hands-on health and wellbeing seminars specifically for shift workers and their workplaces — designed not as theory, but real-world solutions that fit YOUR actual roster.
When I display your team’s schedule and walk through tailored eating windows, sleep strategies, exercise timing, and fatigue management techniques, something clicks. Attendees often say:
“Why didn’t someone teach me this when I started?”
These simple, actionable strategies aren’t complicated — but they completely transform how shift workers feel and perform.
With nearly 20% of the global workforce doing shift work, the need for this kind of training has never been more urgent. The challenge? Many workplace wellbeing teams don’t know these specialised resources even exist — that’s where you come in.
By sharing this podcast with your health and wellbeing leaders, you could spark a game-changing conversation that improves the health and resilience of your entire team.
Ready to move from just surviving shift work to truly thriving?
Visit ahealthyshift.com to download seminar info and share it with your workplace.
Let’s break the myth that shift work has to come at the cost of your health. With the right tools and strategies, you can maintain your energy, health, and happiness — even on the toughest schedules.
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ANNOUNCING
"The Shift Workers Collective"
https://join.ahealthyshift.com/the-shift-workers-collective
Click the link to learn all about it
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YOU CAN FIND ME AT
COACHING
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Disclaimer: Roger Sutherland is not a doctor or a medical professional. Always consult a physician before implementing any strategies mentioned in this podcast. Use of this information is strictly at your own risk. Roger Sutherland will not assume any liability for direct or indirect losses or damages that may result from the use of the information contained in this podcast including but not limited to economic loss, injury, illness, or death.
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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 hello everybody. It's Roger here, roger Sutherland, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of a Healthy Shift podcast.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about something that's really important to me and something that needs to be really important to you, and that is my shift work health and wellbeing seminars. It's going to sound like one great, big, long ad, but it needs to be, and there's a reason being, and I'll tell you exactly why. These seminars came about because of a big problem, and this is something that I've identified over many, many years of doing frontline policing and 24-7 shift work. How much education did you actually get when you first went through your academy or when you were trained around how to go about doing shift work? Who told you how to go about doing it optimally? Who told you how to eat and when to eat? Who told you how to exercise and when to exercise? And I know a lot of people don't find time for it, but we need to and we need to work with this. I know that a lot of workplaces throw a few resources around. They might give you a pamphlet, or you might get a half an hour lecture from someone, maybe a webinar, but there's not any ongoing support. And what happens is this leads to stress, it leads to burnout, it leads to chronic fatigue. And what does that all lead to? A lot of unplanned leave. People end up burnt out and they end up off work, putting more pressure on the people who are there. Now. I've seen it firsthand during my 40-plus years in shift work, and people are doing their best, but they're not getting the information or support you need to stay healthy and thrive in your shift working environment. This is having an impact on your health, and if you aren't educated on the best way to go about it and supported by management in this way, then you are going to have massive problems as time unfolds.
Speaker 1:Have a look around you at the people that have been doing shift work for a long time. Yep, there's the odd Jenny who is fantastic, is in really good shape, exercises all the time, looks fantastic and everybody else despises her. But what is she doing and how is she going about it and where did she get her information, discipline, motivation from? And this is the question that we've got to ask ourselves. There are those people, but there's a lot, a lot that are not, and we need to get this education out there and we need to get it out now, and the reason being it's nearly one in five people are designated shift workers now worldwide. One in five, it's 20%. When you look at the populations of places like the USA, you look at Asia, you look at Europe, you look at Australia and places like that, if one in five of those people are now shift workers, we have a very, very demanding 24-7 society. Today, when you order that Amazon parcel, you expect it to turn up the next day. That doesn't happen by accident. Flying on planes. We've talked about all of this. There are many, many shift workers out there. We think police, fire, ambulance, frontline health nurses, doctors, etc. But we forget about all of the others and we need to stop that Now.
Speaker 1:Why do these seminars actually exist. Stop that Now. Why do these seminars actually exist? Well, here's the truth.
Speaker 1:My seminars didn't just happen. What actually happened was they started because someone like you heard me talking about Shift Work. Health follows me on social media, has seen me on LinkedIn, has heard this podcast, and what they did was they reached out and told their health and wellbeing teams that I exist. And suddenly, there I was, delivering a seminar and we have rolled on and got better and better and better at it since that very day. Think about it. You know I exist. You're all the young people that are in the workforce that are actually following me on social media and learning strategies around it.
Speaker 1:Do you honestly think management or health and wellbeing are aware? No, they're actually not. And when they are, generally, when they're made aware, they absolutely jump at the opportunity to bring me in to speak to staff or to make something happen that way. To bring me in to speak to staff or to make something happen that way. Now I will travel anywhere to deliver these live, and the reason why I do that is because I believe in the power of a live and interactive session. I think it offers so much more. It makes me not just some voice online. You get to feel the energy. You get to see the energy. You get to ask questions. You get to really feel it. I'm actually right there and I'm showing you how to make shift work in your environment work for you.
Speaker 1:Now, the feedback from these seminars has been quite humbling and incredible. To be perfectly honest with you, I've been all over this country delivering health and wellbeing seminars and I've just heard time and time again where on earth were you when I first started shift work? This is just so simple but so motivating. There are simple strategies we just don't realise that we can put into place. Simple strategies we just don't realise that we can put into place. This is telling me that I am on the right track, and this is why you need to put it up the line. But here is my biggest hurdle, and that is getting the staff to tell management that I exist, and that comes down to you.
Speaker 1:Health and wellbeing teams are busy, but they are always looking for new programs to help their people. They just don't know about me unless someone speaks up. They've got money. They've got budget. We're at the end of the financial year right now and workplaces are allocating budgets to programs like this, and this is the perfect time to get the seminar on the books or to raise awareness ready for the next financial year. If they don't know we exist, they can't do anything about it. And what they're looking for, if you think about it, they don't want the responsibility. Health and wellbeing are coordinators. If they can tick a box and say, yep, we've got someone to come in and lecture us on shift work, then they're ticking a box and everything goes really well for them, but you as the, the employee, benefit from it. Now, one thing that makes a huge difference that people actually lean forward in their chairs is when I get a copy of your workplace's roster and I put it up on the board and I actually sit down and break it down and I show you how to work that roster in a way that works for you. It's practical and it's real world stuff, and the feedback that I get after this on people who have actually gone about it and done it differently it has changed their lives.
Speaker 1:Now, managers and health and wellbeing teams can't keep up with every new piece of research or strategy around shift work, can they? I mean, it's not a priority for them, but I do. I stay on top of it, so you don't have to. All you got to do is ask, because I will have the answers to what is going on, because this is my obsession. I absolutely love it and I know that from experience that I can actually help and I get this because I've been in middle management in policing. I know what it's like from both the employer side and also from the employee side. This isn't just theory for me. I've lived it, I know it, I understand it, I've worked it and I know those feelings and how to go about it. Now I'm not a researcher or just some well-meaning speaker throwing information at you without understanding what it's like. This is real, it is practical and it works.
Speaker 1:I also support workplaces with fatigue management. So if you've got a new EBA coming up at work and your roster is a massive problem, why not get someone in to actually have a look at it, to talk to staff, to talk to management, understand the requirements from both sides and actually help staff to build a roster that will work for everybody? It's possible and there's fatigue management software that can be used to actually put all of this together instead of just packing people into a 24-hour environment. And we have to stop doing this. All right, that's it. That's all I'm going to say about it. I'm putting it back on you.
Speaker 1:You, the listener, are the one that needs to make your health and well-being aware. You need to be posting into your Facebook forums, your WhatsApp chat groups, making people aware that I exist. All I want to do is get shift workers healthy out there. That's all I want to see. I just want to see people starting to thrive, because the hardest thing for me to do is to look at research today and see in the past, with lack of education, how detrimental the research is towards shift work. But I honestly believe that we can thrive in our shift working environment. All we've got to do is learn strategies about how to go about it, and without spreading the word we can't do that. So I need you to spread the word. Can you do me a favor? Please make people aware of me in Facebooks, in your WhatsApp group chats, in your forums, through your newsletters. I think this is something that's really, really important to do to bring more awareness, because the more your colleagues are aware of how to go about doing shift work, the best environment it will be for you to actually work in.
Speaker 1:If you think about it, you might think, oh, why bother? But you know what If you're a, why bother? Why bother yourself? Because the bottom line is you are part of the problem. If that's the case, do something about it. At least try. All right.
Speaker 1:So if you're listening right now and you know that your workplace could benefit from one of my shift work health and well-being seminars, please don't wait. Go to my website. The link is in the show notes, or you can go to a healthy shiftcom. Up the top is a menu item that literally says seminar. Click on that and it will take you to the page you can read all about it and on that page you can download my free resource, which tells you all about the seminars, which makes a fantastic attachment to actually put on any internal memo or application to put it up to your health and wellbeing department. This is a really, really simple step that you can take that can really open a door to a conversation that could get me to your workplace to help you.
Speaker 1:So here's my question for you Are you just accepting how things are today? Are you going to try and actually do something about it? It's up to you. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you on the next one. Thank you for listening. 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.