Who Owns Shift Worker Health

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Let me ask you a question that I've started asking 24-7 organizations. And it's amazing how often it creates crickets. Silence. And the question is this who actually owns Shift Worker Health in your organization? Is it health and well-being? Health and safety? HR? People and culture? Operations? The individual worker? The supervisor? Or is the real answer everybody owns a little bit of it? Which means nobody really owns any of it at all. Because if you've got hundreds of people working through the biological night, but nobody is responsible for making sure that they understand how to manage the demands of doing that, I reckon we've got a conversation worth having. So let's have it. 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.

Why No Single Team Fits

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And welcome back to another episode of A Healthy Shift, the Healthy Shift Worker Podcast. This is the third episode of what has unintentionally become a bit of a series for leaders of 24-7 organizations. Now, in the first episode, I asked whether choosing not to spend money on shift work education actually means that you're saving that money. Because the cost may simply be showing up elsewhere through things like fatigue, absence, overtime, backfill, retention, and operational disruption. It's hitting the bottom line. Then in the last episode, I asked another pretty simple question. You gave people the roster, but did anyone actually teach you how to work it? So today I want to take that conversation one step further. And again, imagine we're sitting across the table and we're having a coffee. You've got a 24-7 workforce, and I've just asked you who owns your shift worker health in your organization? What's your answer? Now I'm not trying to catch you out here because I actually think this is a very difficult question for many organizations to answer. Now you might say, oh, health and well-being. Okay. But do they control the roster? Probably not. You might say, what about safety? Well, they might own fatigue policy and fatigue risk management, but do they provide practical education to workers about sleeping after night shift, managing light exposure, caffeine timing, movement, eating around the roster? Maybe. But probably not. Now you might say people in culture or HR, but are they actually present at three o'clock in the morning when the night shift workforce is experiencing these issues? No. You might say operations. Well, they're certainly close to the workforce and roster, but their primary responsibility is usually delivering the operation. And eventually, somebody might say, Well, surely the individual has some responsibility for their own health. And absolutely they do. In fact, this is how I open all of my presentations. It's not all on the organization. You have to take responsibility for yourself. And I'm a massive believer in personal responsibility. But here's where I have a problem with that. You can't expect people to manage what they've never been taught to understand. If we're asking somebody to take responsibility for managing their life around shift work, surely we owe it to them to give them the knowledge to do that. And that's the gap. And that's what makes this particularly interesting. Shift work doesn't neatly fit into one department. The consequence can show up everywhere. If somebody's too fatigued to work, that becomes a safety issue. If they call in sick, it's an operational issue. If someone has to cover their shift, it's an overtime or a backfill issue. If they're struggling physically or mentally, it's probably becoming a well-being issue. And if they eventually decide that they can't continue working that roster and leave, now we've got a retention and a recruitment issue. The roster itself may be the operations issue and policies may sit with safety. Well-being programs sit with people and culture. And the person experiencing all of it? Well, they're standing there at three o'clock in the morning trying to get through their shift. And that's why I don't think the answer is simply deciding that one department should own everything related to shift work. Because that's probably being unrealistic. But I do think that organizations need to ask this question: where does responsibility for building shift work capability actually sit? Because that's different. And when I talk about capability, I'm talking about whether your workforce actually understands the biological demands being placed on them and has practical strategies to better manage those demands. Do they understand why sleeping during the day is difficult? Do they understand what that light, that daylight, that internal light is doing to their circadian rhythm? Do they understand the impact of caffeine and how the timing of it matters more than they realize? Do they understand that when they eat can matter even more than what they're eating? Do they understand how movement can support alertness and health? And do they have practical strategies for just transitioning between shifts? And perhaps most importantly, when you get a newbie start in six months'

Build Capability Before People Struggle

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time, who teaches them? And that's where this gets really interesting for me. Because a lot of workplace health support is understandably reactive. Someone struggles, then we respond. They report fatigue, they go to their supervisor, they access EAP, they speak with their doctor, they take leave, they make a fatigue report. Now those systems are all important, and I'm certainly not suggesting that we replace any of them. But what are we doing before someone struggles? And that's the piece that I'm really interested in. What if we move some of those conversations upstream? What if the person starting their first night shift already understood what was about to happen to them biologically and why? Imagine somebody going into nights knowing that there's nothing wrong with them when they're struggling to stay awake at four in the morning. Their body is doing exactly what it is designed to do. Imagine them understanding before they even start why we're talking about light exposure, why we're talking about caffeine and timing, why their sleep environment matters just so much. And why scrolling on their phone in bed after night shift probably is doing more harm than good. And then why that eating through the biological night deserves a lot more consideration. Now, suddenly we're not waiting until somebody's completely exhausted before we start talking about fatigue. What we're doing is we're actually giving them tools to work with, we're giving them knowledge. And this is where I think the next challenge appears. Let's say an organization decides to do exactly that. You bring in shift work-specific education, fantastic. Your people get an understanding of the basics, boom. They start having conversations, they start trying things, and that's really good. And then the educator leaves. And this is something that I've spoken about before. Because if the knowledge leaves the room with the educator, all you did was rent it. And it can be an expensive rent. So who keeps that alive? Who is there when the questions come up two months later? Who understands the context of that particular workplace? And who knows what the roster actually feels like because they're in it and working it. Who helps stop the old miss from creeping back into the lunchroom conversation? You'll get used to nights, mate. Just sleep when you're type. Have another coffee, you'll be right. That shift work, mate. Nothing you can do about it. And this is where I think we've got an enormous opportunity. Because you've already got people inside your organization who care about this stuff. And you do, and you know who they are. Because every time I speak to a group of shift workers, there are always people who lean forward. They ask questions. They've been trying to work this out themselves for years. They go home and tell their partner what they've learned. They talk about it with their colleagues the next night. These people already exist. The question is, what could happen if we actually develop them? Give them deeper education, help them to understand their own roster and behaviors, teach them appropriate boundaries, support them, give them credible resources, and then recognize them within the organization as somebody who can help good shift work conversations happening. They're not there to diagnose or prescribe or counsel people. We're not adding more responsibility to them. We don't want to overburden an already burdened shift worker. We're not replacing the fatigue manager, the doctor, the psychologist, the dietitian, the safety team, or leadership. Because that's all really important. Their job isn't to become the workplace health expert, their role is to help create shift work capability from within their own workforce itself. They're on shift in real time. They benefit from it as well. The more people that are educated in that workforce, the better it performs.

Keeping Knowledge Alive With Champions

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And that is the exact thinking behind Shift Work Champions. And I want to make something really clear here. I'm not suggesting that every organization needs exactly the same solution. That's why I've changed the way I have conversations with organizations. Before I start talking about what I think you need, I want to understand what already exists. What are your workers struggling with? How is it showing up operationally? What education do you currently provide? What happens when someone struggles? Who keeps shift work knowledge alive after the education's been delivered? And yes, who currently owns shift worker health capability inside your organization? Now maybe you've already got something excellent in place, and I'm proud of you. That's fantastic. Let's not build another layer just for the sake of it. But if we ask those questions and discover that nobody really knows where any of this sits, then we've identified something really important. Because I think there's a big difference between having workplace well-being initiatives and then having shift work capability. You can have an fantastic employment assistant program. You can have gym memberships, fruit in the lunchroom, mental health programs, fatigue policies, great leadership, all valuable. And still have a workforce that doesn't understand what their circadian rhythm is or how to prepare themselves for sleep after night shift. Now that's not a criticism of those existing systems. It's simply a different capability. And it's one I believe has been overlooked for far, far too long. So if we're finishing our coffee now, I wouldn't tell you to go back to your organization and immediately create another position called head of shift worker health. That's not the point. I suggest you go back and start asking questions. And I want you, as the shift worker, to ask these questions. What do we currently teach our shift workers about shift work? What happens when somebody new joins the roster? And when people struggle, are we predominantly proactive or are we reactive? Then, when education is delivered, who keeps that knowledge alive afterwards? And finally, the last question: who owns the responsibility for making sure that our people actually have the capability to manage the roster that we're asking them to work? And then I want you to listen carefully to the answers. Because if everybody points somewhere else, you've probably just learned something very important about your own

Questions To Ask And Next Steps

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organization. If those questions have really got you thinking about your own workforce, this is exactly why I've developed the Shift Work Champions Enterprise Framework. It starts with workforce education, but it doesn't have to finish there. The aim is to help organizations to build sustainable shift work capability from within, using people who already understand your workplace, the culture, and the reality of your roster. Now I've put together an updated executive brief that explains the framework and the thinking behind it. You'll find the link in the show notes. I highly encourage you to download it, have a read, and if it raises some questions about your own organization, put it up the line. And let's have a shift work strategy session and actually explore them. Because perhaps the first step isn't deciding who owns Shiftworker Health. Perhaps it's recognizing that someone needs to own the capability to support it. Because it just doesn't have to be this way. 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.