The Question Nobody Answers

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I was having a conversation recently about shift worker health, and I asked what I thought was a pretty simple question. When somebody starts working shifts in your organization, who teaches them how to actually work that roster? Not how to do their job, not how to follow the fatigue policy, and not where to find the EAP. But who teaches them how to sleep after night shift? How to use light to support their body clock, when to eat, when to exercise, how to use caffeine without destroying their sleep, and how to recover and then do it all again. And when you really think about it, the answer in nearly every single organization is nobody. So let's talk about that 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. 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.

Handed A Roster And Left

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And welcome back to a healthy shift, the shift workers podcast. I want this one to feel a little bit different today. Now, close your eyes. I want you to imagine that you and I are sitting down over a coffee and you're responsible for a workforce that operates around the clock. And you've literally just asked me this question. Raj, what do you think organizations are getting wrong when it comes to supporting shift workers? I sit back in my chair and I lift up my coffee and I take a sip. Because I reckon my answer is going to be really simple. We're good at teaching people how to do their job, but we're nowhere near as good at teaching them how to manage their life around when we're asking them to do that job. And those are two completely different things. Think about somebody that joins a 24-7 organization. They go through the induction, they'll learn policies and procedures, and they'll receive safety training, they learn all the systems, they know where to park, they meet the supervisor, they know how to sign in, they'll be taught the technical requirements of their role. Everybody, eventually, someone just hands them a roster and says, Here you go. Days here, nights here, then you do weekends, maybe 12-hour shifts, maybe rotating between days and nights, and off you go. Now I want you to imagine this. Imagine if we actually explain what the roster is gonna ask of them. Now you're gonna be required to remain awake and perform when your biology is pushing you towards sleep. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna send you home in daylight and we're gonna expect you to get eight hours sleep while your biology and the environment are sending signals associated with wakefulness. You're gonna have to work out when to eat, when to exercise, when to use caffeine, how to recover, and how to fit your family and social life around all of this and the pressures that go with it. Here you go, mate. Good luck. And of course, nobody actually says that. But isn't that effectively what happens in most workplaces? Because somewhere along the way, we've assumed that working shifts is something that people simply work out. Think about it. We don't get told about it. Here's your roster, go and work it. This is it, this is the job. And believe me, shift workers are incredibly good people and they will work things out. I spent more than 40 years working 24-7 shifts myself. You learn from the person sitting next to you. You learn from the bloke who's been on nights for 20 years, and you try and work out why you can sleep after one night shift, but you can't sleep in the next one. You discover

Trial And Error Becomes Culture

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that coffee at 4 a.m. might get you home, but then you wonder why you're staring at the ceiling when you get to bed. You are chronically fatigued and craving sugars and carbs, and you eat. Well, you're eating because you're tired. You eat because you're bored. You don't eat because you're tired. You train at stupid times. You mistraining altogether. Ah, it's another week. All of a sudden it's two weeks, three weeks, a month, then you can't be bothered. You're mistraining altogether. You can't sleep, then you finally sleep in. You get up early because the family needs you. You drag yourself through another family function when all you need to do is sleep. Then you have to drag yourself through another shift. Presenteeism. You're there, but you're not really there. And eventually, all of that trial and error becomes what you think shift work is. We even develop a culture around it. You ready? How many times have you heard this? You'll get used to it. Oh, that's just nights, mate. Everybody's tired. And the best one? Hey, wait until you've been doing this for 10 years. And here's the question that I'd put back to the leader that's sitting across the table from me. Why are we relying on trial and error when we can educate people? We know a lot more now about circadian biology. We understand the importance of light, we understand sleep pressure, we know caffeine has a long half-life and that timing matters. We understand that the timing of food now matters, particularly when we're asking people to eat during the

Biology Beats Policy Documents

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biological night. We know that movement can be used strategically. We understand recovery. So why wouldn't we give people that knowledge? And I think there's another really important distinction here. A lot of organizations will tell me, oh, we've got a fatigue management policy. Good. You should. You actually have to. It's law. But knowing the fatigue policy is not the same thing as knowing how to manage fatigue. A policy might tell someone what to do when they're too fatigued to work safely, but education can help the person to understand some of the behaviors and biological factors that are contributing to how they arrived at that point in the first place. And then they can make an informed decision. And they are different things. It's the same with EAP. EAP, Employment Assistant Program, can be incredibly important support when somebody needs it. But it's not the same as proactively teaching a new night shift worker how to prepare for daytime sleep. Whoever taught them, they just knock off and off they go home and they try and nut it out themselves. Now, a well-being program can be fantastic, but generic advice to eat well, exercise, reduce stress, and get eight hours sleep can become incredibly difficult to apply when you're finishing work at 7 a.m. and coming back again at 7 p.m. And that is the gap that I keep seeing. It's not necessarily that organizations do not care about their shift workers. Many have invested heavily in supporting their people. The missing piece is often shift work-specific education. Education that starts with the reality of the roster rather than pretending everyone lives a nine-to-five life. If I'm talking to your night shift team, I want to know what time they start, what time they finish, how many nights they're working, whether they're permanent nights or rotating, what happens after the last night. What are they struggling with? Because telling somebody that they should get morning sunlight is very different when their morning is actually the end of their working day. And we're trying to help

Sleep Light Movement Meal Timing

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them prepare for sleep. See, context matters, timing matters. And that's why I talk so much about four key areas in my talks: sleep, daylight, movement, and nutrient timing. These are not just four random health tips that I just tick a box and cover. They're actually major signals and behaviors that with knowledge we can work with around the realities of a 24-7 roster. And once a shift worker understands why those things matter, this conversation completely changes. Because instead of don't drink coffee after midnight because Roger said so, they understand why caffeine at the wrong time can interfere with the sleep that they're desperately going to need when they get home. Instead of you've got to make your bedroom dark, they understand why we're trying to reduce the wake-prompting signals reaching their brain when they're attempting to sleep during the day. Instead of telling them don't eat crap overnight, we can have a much better conversation about the biological night, food timing, preparation, and what might realistically work during their shift to fuel them without impacting on them biologically. What we're doing is we're actually giving them the why. And that gives them a much better chance of making an informed decision when I'm not standing beside them. But then if you're sitting across the table from me, I'd probably say, and see, there's another problem. Because let's say you agree with everything I've just said. You bring me into your organization, you get your workforce together, I deliver a fantastic session. People are engaged, they're asking questions, they're talking about their sleep. Someone suddenly realizes why what they've been doing after nights might be making things harder. Brilliant. But then what happens next week? What happens in three months?

Make Learning Stick Internally

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And what happens when the next group of employees starts? What happens when I'm gone? This is why I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that a one-off seminar on its own is the complete solution. And we know that education is incredibly valuable. But it should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it. Because if all of the knowledge leaves the room with the educator, you only rented it. And that's the part that I think 24-7 organizations need to start thinking about. How do we keep that knowledge inside the organization? How do we reinforce it? How do we make shift work understanding part of the workplace rather than something that everyone vaguely remembers from a presentation six months ago? That's when that shift work dude came in. And this is where internal capability becomes really interesting. What if we educated the broader workforce first? Give people a common understanding of shift work biology and the practical strategies that they can use around their roster. Then identify people from within that workforce who want to go deeper. People who already understand the workplace. They know the roster. They understand the culture. They know the people. They're respected. They're trusted. And most importantly, they know what it's like to stand right there in that place at 3 a.m. because they are doing it themselves. And then we develop those people. Now we're not developing them as doctors, and they're not counselors, and not as replacements for managers or health professionals. But what we are doing is we're educating them as educated people within the workforce who can help reinforce good information, encourage informed conversations, model practical strategies, and direct colleagues towards appropriate support where and when it's needed. Now we're no longer just delivering information. What we're doing is we're actually building capability. And if I was still sitting across the table from you over that coffee, this is possibly the question that I would leave you with. So tomorrow morning, when you walk into the organization, I want you to ask someone this. Be brave. What

Shift Work Champions And Next Steps

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do we actually teach our people about how to work shifts? Not what policies do we have, not what well-being benefits do we offer, not what happens once somebody's struggling, but what do we proactively teach the human being that we're asking to work through the night about managing their biology around the roster? If you've got a comprehensive answer to that, fantastic. If the answer is actually, I'm not sure we teach them anything, then I reckon you've just found somewhere worth looking. Because giving somebody a roster tells them when to work, it doesn't teach them how to shift work. And there's a massive difference between those two. Keep that in mind. A massive difference. When to work, how to work. If this conversation got you thinking about your own workforce, I've developed the Shift Work Champions Enterprise Framework specifically to help 24-7 organizations move from workforce education towards sustainable internal shift work capability. I've also put together an updated executive brief that explains the problem that we're trying to solve and how that framework works and what building internal capability can actually look like within a 24-7 organization. The link to learn more about Shift Work Champions and or to download the executive brief is located down in the show notes. I highly encourage you to have a read. And then maybe we should have that coffee because your organization already teaches people how to do their job. Maybe it's time we taught them how to manage the shifts we're asking them to work. Because it doesn't 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.