What Changes After The Seminar

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If you're responsible for the health and well-being of people working around the clock, I've got a question for you. What happens after the training? You brought someone in, your staff attended. Maybe they'd learned something. Maybe there were some really good conversations afterwards. But then everyone just went back to work. And three weeks later, what changed? Three months later? What do they remember? And 12 months later, is anything actually any different? Because I've been thinking a lot about this lately. And I think we've been expecting one-off workplace education to do a job that it was never actually designed to do. I'll explain what I mean. Because it doesn't have to be this way.

Why Healthy Shifts Matter

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Whether you're a shift worker, trying to feel better, or a leader responsible for the people who keep your organisation running around the clock, you're in the right place. Welcome to a healthy shift. I'm Roger Sutherland, and after more than four decades of working 24-7 shifts with Victoria Plus, followed by years of studying nutrition, circadian biology, human performance, and working with literally thousands of shift workers, I've made it my mission to change the conversation around shift work. Because healthier people create stronger teams, and stronger teams build better organizations. And it all starts by understanding how to work with your biology and not against it. Let's get into today's episode. And welcome back to a healthy shift. You are so welcome. I sincerely appreciate you being here. Thank you very much for joining today. Grab a coffee because I really want to talk to you about something that I've been thinking about for quite a while now. Pull up a chair.

The Basics Shift Workers Miss

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Now I need to start by making something really clear. I heavily believe in shift work education. I've spent years delivering it to 24-7 organizations and in my coaching. I've stood in front of rooms full of nurses, emergency service workers, manufacturing workers, and people from all kinds of 24-7 environments explaining to them why they feel the way they do. And I've actually watched the light bulbs go on. I've got the feedback. Someone suddenly understands why they're wide awake when they're desperate to sleep. Someone finally understands why eating the same way on night shift as they do during the day might be actually contributing to how they feel. And then someone understands why daylight matters, why timing matters, why their body isn't simply being difficult. And I love those moments. It lights me up. Because most shift workers were never taught any of this. Think about that. We employ somebody, we put them on to nights or rotating shifts or 12-hour shifts or even a combination of all three. And then we basically say, off you go. We leave them be and we tell them to work it out. Nobody sits them down at the beginning and explains, right, now, this is what working against your biological clock can do. And this is why you may in fact struggle to sleep. This is why you might feel hungry at strange times. This is why you've got gas, digesti, digestive issues, bloating. This is why you can feel absolutely exhausted and yet and get into bed and suddenly you're wide awake. Or you go to sleep and you wake up half an hour later and you're wide awake. Now, this is why light is going to become incredibly important. Now, most people learn shift work through trial and error, and they do. We talk to each other, and I know that's one way I certainly learnt it. And I've had more than 40 years to make so many errors. And I know I was never taught. Were you? Have you been taught? So education really does matter enormously. In fact, I believe education is actually a foundation of any 24-7 business.

Why Information Fades On Roster

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But here's where my thinking has now changed direction. Because education just can't be the end of the strategy. It's the beginning. And I think that's where we've been getting workplace well-being wrong. Now imagine I come into your workplace on Monday, you've got a hundred shift workers sitting in front of me. We're going to spend some time together, we're going to talk about sleep, daylight, and then I would chat about movement, talk about when they're eating, we talk about fatigue and recovering. People ask a few questions, we have a few laughs. Hopefully, a few people are sitting there thinking, why hasn't anybody explained this to me before? Brilliant. Because that's exactly what I want. But then Tuesday arrives, I'm gone. Your people are back on their next rotation, and someone has had a shocking night's sleep. Someone else has just been moved onto nights. Another person has a toddler who's kept them awake half the day. And there you are, standing in front of the vending machine at three o'clock in the morning trying to work out what on earth can I eat. And somebody else is so tired, they wonder whether they should exercise after work or just go home. And who is continuing this conversation? And that is the question that started really bothering me. Because one keynote can't support an entire workforce. And neither can one coach. Now, this isn't a criticism of the workplace seminars. Far from it. Well, I'm not going to criticize myself, am I? Because they are incredibly valued when they're done properly. The problem is what we're actually expecting them to achieve. We can't give someone an hour of information and expect that information to permanently change years of behavior. Particularly when we're talking about chronically fatigued people. Think about your own life. How much information have you heard that made complete sense at the time? Then life happened. That's normal. Think about it. How much financial advice have you got, but we don't do that. How much health advice have we got, but we don't do that. You go to the physio, the physio gives you exercise. We certainly don't do them. And that's normal. But now let's add a night shift, rotating rosters, family fatigue over time, the drive to work and back. Some people drive an hour, hour and a half to get to work and then get home after a long shift. Add trying to work out when you're going to sleep, and trying to work out when you're going to see your partner and the kids. And then add the 27 things somebody told you at the well-being seminar six weeks ago. Of course things get forgotten. And it isn't because people don't care. And it isn't because they're unmotivated, it's because they're actually human. And this is where I started asking myself a different question.

Building Internal Shift Work Capability

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What would happen if the education did not leave when I did? What if it became part of a strategy? What if we could teach the foundations across the whole workforce and then build that knowledge inside the organization? What if there were people actually working those shifts who understood the principles? People that their colleagues already know, people who understand the workplace, people who understand the roster, people who could continue those conversations at two o'clock in the morning rather than waiting for another well-being day six months from now. And that is where the shift work champions framework came from. And I want to be careful here because the shift work champion isn't there to become the workplace doctor. They're not diagnosing anyone, they're not replacing your health professionals, and they're not policing what we eat. And they're certainly not walking around telling exhausted colleagues that they need to try harder. That is literally the opposite of what we're trying to achieve. They're there to help good shift work education and to keep it alive inside the organization. Think about it like this. If someone attends one of my sessions and learned that light is one of the most powerful signals to their body and receives, that's education. But three months later, when they're struggling with their sleep again, who's helping them remember what they learn? If someone understands why having some consistency around their sleep can help, that's education. But when their roster changes and everything gets thrown upside down, who's there to help continue that conversation? That's capability. And there's a big difference between the two. And that's what I want to change. One gives people information, and the other helps the organization to retain and use that knowledge. And that's why I've become so passionate about the phrase internal shift work capability. Because I don't want organizations to become dependent on me. I actually want the opposite. I want to walk into a workplace, educate the workforce, and then help develop the right champions and eventually know that there are people inside your organization continuing the work on shift in the real environment in real time with the actual shift workers that are struggling. And from an organizational perspective, I think we need to start asking harder questions about our well-being strategies. If you're experiencing a high staff turnover, unplanned leave is continually climbing, fatigue is constantly being discussed. If morale isn't where you'd like it to be, and if people are telling you that they're exhausted, then another information session may absolutely be worthwhile. But what happens afterwards? And this is the question that I'm asking you today. Because if every well-being initiative starts and finishes with an external provider, you don't really own the capability. They do. And I think that we can all together do better than that.

Responsibility And Control The Controllable

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There's another side of this that matters enormously to me, and that's responsibility. An organization can't go home with somebody and make them sleep. You can't make your workers get outside. You can't control everything they eat, and you can't make somebody go for a walk. They are adults. Ultimately, they are decisions that they have to make for themselves. But here's the problem: how can we expect people to make informed decisions about shift work if you've never actually taught them how shift work affects them? Education enables responsibility, and that's a really important distinction. Give people that knowledge. Help them understand why. Give them simple strategies that actually work around their roster. Then let them control the things that they can control. And that's one of the messages that I've taught shift workers for years. Control the controllable. Because you're never going to control everything about shift work. And neither is your employer. But there is an enormous amount that we can do better once we totally understand what we're dealing with. So if you're a people and culture leader, a HR leader, well-being manager, operational manager, or anyone responsible for a 24-7 workforce, then this is what I'd like you to take away from today's episode. Don't stop educating your people. And please don't hear me saying that, do more of it. But stop expecting education alone to create long-term organizational change. You need to use that education as a foundation and then ask, how are we going to keep this alive? How do we reinforce it? How do we make sure that the person starting night shift six months from now has the same understanding or support? How do we build knowledge inside our workforce instead of continually bringing the knowledge in from outside? That's the conversation I think 24-7 organizations need to start having. And this is exactly why I created the Shift Work Champions framework. Not to replace workforce education, but to make sure it doesn't end after I've walked out the door.

Framework Link And Closing Challenge

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Now, if this has got you thinking about your own workforce, I've put a link in the show notes where you can learn more about Shift Work Champions and that enterprise framework. I beg you to have a look through it. And as you're looking through it, I want you to ask yourself this one question. What happens after your current Shift Work training ends? I'll chat you in the next episode because it literally does not have to be this way. Because real change starts with awareness. And awareness changes conversations, and conversations change organisations. And organizations change lives. So thank you for spending this time with me. And until next time, I want you to remember this. It doesn't have to be this way. Take care of yourself and take care of each other.