The Real Reason People Leave

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If you are responsible for a 24-7 workforce and you are constantly recruiting people to replace the ones who are leaving, I've got a question for you. Do you actually know why they're leaving? And I don't mean what they wrote on the exit form. I mean what happened during the months or years before they finally decided I can't keep doing this. Because sometimes people aren't leaving the job. They're leaving what the job has done to the rest of their life. And if we don't understand that distinction, we can keep recruiting replacements forever without ever addressing the biggest part of the problem. And that is what I want to talk about today because it doesn't have to be this way. For far too long, we've accepted fatigue, poor sleep, burnout, and declining health as simply part of working in a 24-7 environment. I don't believe they are. 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.

Recruitment Is Not The Fix

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And welcome back to a healthy shift. Pull up a chair, grab a coffee, let's sit down. This is episode four of this series. It's the final episode in this series that I've been doing around my Shift Work Champions framework, and I deliberately wanted to finish here. Staff retention. Because I've been having more conversations lately with organizations are operating around the clock, and this issue keeps coming up. We're losing people. We cannot retain our staff. Unplanned leave is through the roof. Our people are exhausted. We are forever recruiting. And I can completely understand why organizations focus on recruitment. If you've got vacancies, you have to fill them. Simple. The work still needs to be done. But here's another question I think we need to ask at the same time. Why are so many people walking out the other end? Because if we don't understand that, we can become incredibly good at recruitment while we're still having an enormous retention problem. Now, people leave jobs for all sorts of reasons. Let's make that clear from the very start. Money, leadership, career opportunities, family, culture, location, workload, poor management, retirement. There are hundreds of reasons. And look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that shift work is responsible for all of your staff turnover. It isn't. But if you are running a 24-7 organization, I think there's another question that's worth asking. How much is the experience of living around shift work contributing to people eventually saying, I'm done, I've had enough? Because I've heard versions of that sentence for more than 40 years. And I've also worked with people who are getting very close to it. Not necessarily because they hated their job, quite the opposite. I know people who love being a nurse and love being a policeman. They loved their job in the emergency services and love the people that they work with. They absolutely love the job, but they just couldn't keep living like this. And that's different. Think

When Shift Work Makes Life Smaller

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about what can gradually happen to someone working shifts. At the beginning, they're coping. Night shift is hard, but they get used to it. That's what everyone tells them anyway. Then sleep starts to become really inconsistent. They're tired more often. Exercise really starts to drop away. And they're grabbing for food wherever they can. Maybe their weight starts to creep up and their digestion changes. They're relying more heavily on caffeine. Their days off start becoming recovery days and get shorter. And without really noticing it happening, their life gets smaller. They're saying no to friends because the roster doesn't line up. They're missing family events. They're sleeping when everyone else is awake. They're awake when everyone else is sleeping. Their partner is frustrated. The kids don't see them and want their attention. They get home absolutely exhausted and have got nothing left to give. And eventually the question changes from how do I get better at shift work to I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. And that is the moment that I really want organizations to understand. Because the resignation letter comes at the end. But the problem's been developing within your organization for years. And this is where I think retention conversations sometimes become too focused on the workplace itself. We ask, do you like your manager? Do you feel valued? Are you being paid enough? Are there career opportunities? These are all really important questions. But what about? Can you build a decent life around this roster? Now that's a very different question. Because your best employee can love working for you and still decide that the life surrounding their job has become totally unsustainable. And that's where shift work education matters. Not because we're going to magically fix staff turnover, I'm not even saying that. But because there's parts of shift work experience that can help people to understand. And when they understand, they manage it better. And this is something that's become incredibly important to me now. I don't want to teach somebody how to become better at working. I want to help them to have more energy to do the things that they love outside of work. That's the outcome. Because if all we're doing is making someone slightly more productive for another 12-hour shift, I don't think we've achieved very much. I want them finishing their run of shifts and having a great life outside of it. I want them having enough energy to take their kids out, to see their friends, to exercise, to go for a walk, have some sort of a relationship, enjoy your days off, feel like themselves again. And here's the interesting part when shift workers have more energy outside of their shift working life, they're in a much better position to thrive within it. And that is good for the employer. And it's pretty good for the organization, just to say. But here's the problem: most shift workers have never been taught how to do that. We've talked about this throughout this series. They've been trained extensively on how to do their job. We run e-learning packages to tick boxes and policies and procedures and everything by them, but very few have been educated properly on how to build their personal life around a 24-7 roster. So they improvise. And often they're following health advice, which is designed for somebody who wakes up Monday to Friday, eats during the day, exercises after work, and then goes to bed and sleeps through the night. Then we wonder why the advice doesn't fit. A night shift worker doesn't need another morning routine designed for someone who starts work at 9 a.m. They need to understand their own situation. And that's why education has to come first. Because

Fatigue Management Through Better Education

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if I can get a shift worker to understand the basics of what is happening biologically, things start really making sense. Why that sleep regularity matters, why daylight matters, why movement matters, why the food timing matters, why a planned nap, a strategic nap, can be an incredibly useful fatigue management tool. Why caffeine timing matters. We're not taking it away. We're just teaching people when to use it and how. Why sometimes you're tired but you're actually wired. Why your digestion is terrible overnight. Suddenly they're not thinking, oh my God, there's something wrong with me. They're thinking, okay, now I understand. I did this and this is the result. And once somebody understands the why, then they can start working on the how. Simple strategies, one at a time, not perfection. It's not another enormous list of things that they're failing to do. Control the controllable. That's what I teach. And from the organizational perspective, this is where I think that we need to rethink the well-being strategy. Because if you've got high turnover and high unplanned leave, chronic fatigue and people struggling, I can tell you now, another flyer on the well-being wall isn't going to change anything. Neither will simply tell people to use the EAP after they've already reached the point where they have collapsed. Those services absolutely have a place. I'm not saying that. But what are we doing leading up to that? What are we doing preventatively? What are we teaching somebody when they first enter the shift working environment? What systems are we building around them? And importantly, what happens after the training? Because that's the that's really the entire question behind this entire four-part series.

Building Shift Work Champions Internally

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Now, this is why I created the Shift Work Champions Enterprise Framework. It starts with education, gets the foundational knowledge across the workforce, and it helps people to understand why shift work affects them the way it does. It gives them practical strategies that they can actually use. Then what we do is we identify people within the organization that can take that understanding further. I develop them, educate them, support them, and then certify them as shift work champions for your organization. Now the organization starts building its own internal shift work capability because every conversation that the champion has with somebody else, they're building another champion in the workplace. The education doesn't have to disappear when I walk out the door. There are people inside the workplace who can keep this conversation alive on shift in real time with the people that they already know. And I think this matters for retention because of something very simple. People are more likely to consider staying in environments where they feel understood and supported. And again, I'm choosing my words very carefully here. Shift work champions cannot fix every reason why somebody might leave. It's not going to fix poor leadership and it won't change somebody's salary, and it certainly won't solve an impossible commute. And it isn't going to magically eliminate staff turnover. But if the experience of shift work itself is contributing to people struggling, then that is something that we're working on. And I think organizations have been overlooking this for far too long. There's also a commercial reality here. Losing experienced people costs organizations. Recruitment costs money. Onboarding costs money. Training costs money. Vacancies create pressure. More pressure on those that are left. Overtime creates more pressure on those that are left. And when experienced people leave, all that knowledge walks out the door with them. Then the people who remain have to carry more of that load. And then they become more fatigued. Morale suffers. Unplanned leave increases because they start taking their own time. And potentially you end up with more people that start thinking about leaving because the pressure's too great. And that is the cycle that we're trying to interrupt. But before we can interrupt it, we have to understand what it is that's actually driving it. So if you're a CEO, an operational leader, people and culture leader, a HR professional or a well-being manager listening to this, and your organization is struggling to retain shift workers, I'm not suggesting that I even know why your people are leaving. I don't. Not without talking to you and understanding your organization. But I would encourage you to ask yourself this question: How much of our retention problem is connected to the way our people are experiencing life around shift work? Talk to them. Ask them and then listen. Because you might discover that people don't necessarily want to leave the job. They just don't know how much longer they can keep living the way they're living. And that is a very different problem. And if that is what you're hearing, then perhaps it's time to stop relying entirely on recruitment to solve your retention problem. Start with the education. Give your people the understanding they should probably have received when they very first started working shifts. Then build that understanding into your organization, because that's what I've spent the last four episodes talking about. Education as a foundation, understanding before motivation, internal capability rather than one-off intervention. And the Shift Work Champions framework, keeping that education alive inside the workplace. And that is the framework. If you're

Start The Conversation And Share

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listening to this and thinking, Raj, that sounds very much like what's happening in our organization. I've put a link in the show notes where you can learn more about the Shift Work Champions and the Enterprise Framework. I beg you, have a look through it. And then start these conversations inside your organization. Not should we book another well-being presentation? Ask, what are we actually doing to help our people build sustainable lives around working 24-7? Because that is a very different conversation. And it might just help you to understand why some of your good people are walking away. The link is in the show notes. I want to thank you for joining me on this little four-part series. I hope it's resonated with you. Share it with your leaders. I'll catch you next time and remember, it doesn't have to be this way. If today's episode resonated with you, don't let the conversation stop here. Share it with a colleague, a manager, a friend, a leader, or someone who has the opportunity to improve the lives of people working in a 24-7 environment. Because real change starts with awareness. And awareness changes conversations, and conversations change organizations. 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.