Working Nights

New Information about Sleep and Shift Work

We’ve written extensively about the challenges many shift workers face as a result of not getting enough sleep. A few new studies provide more insight for those with sleep challenges. Continue Reading…

New Research Shift Workers Should Be Aware of…….

Read on if you are interested in identifying whether you might have heart disease, learn about a possible new way to treat sleep apnea, or hear more about sleep disorders…….
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What is Enough Sleep?

Sleep is an often discussed subject, as most of us say and think we do not get enough. But what is enough and what does happens when we are sleep deprived? A recent New York Times article reports these were some of the questions being looked at by the Hospital of Pennsylvania’s Sleep & Chronobiology Laboratory when conducting the longest sleep restriction study of its kind.

For two weeks, dozens of subjects were assigned to one of 3 groups with each group sleeping for a designated number of hours. Not surprisingly, those subjects who slept 8 hours a day hardly had any attention lapses and no cognitive decline over the course of 14 days. However, those who slept less had significantly different experiences and outcomes . Read this article….

Is Time Alone Good for You?

Our contact with shift workers indicates that they tend to spend a lot of time alone. The schedules shift workers are on are often not conducive to a lot of togetherness with family and friends. We often write about the need for shift workers to stay in touch and find time for recreation with others. Recently there have been several studies about the importance of time spent alone. Solitude has been linked with creativity, spirituality, and intellectual insight for decades. Now studies are showing that we remember things better when we are alone. Taking time for self-reflection is a good thing; being surrounded by others can hamper a person’s efforts to figure out what he or she really thinks of something. Perhaps shift workers’ time alone allows them time to know themselves more truly than other do.
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Sleep Critical to Memory Retention

We’ve reported on this in the past……however more information is available. According to a new study in the Feb. 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, during sleep the brain preferentially retains the memories that are most relevant. Researchers set up two experiments to test memory retrieval. In the first experiment, people were asked to learn 40 pairs of words and in the second, participants played a card game where they matched pictures of animals and objects. In both groups, half the volunteers were told that they would be tested in 10 hours. However, all participants were tested later on how well they recalled their tasks.

It turned out that the people who slept and knew a test was coming had substantially improved memory recall. Sleep was critical to memory enhancement. There was an increase in brain activity during deep or “slow wave” sleep in those volunteers knew they would be tested for memory recall.

This should interest managers caring that employees retain on the job and other training. Safety, human resource, and facility managers might consider fatigue management training to ensure employees are fully aware of the benefits of sleep for themselves and the workplace.

The researchers think that the brain’s prefrontal cortex focuses on memories viewed as relevant while awake and the hippocampus consolidates these memories during sleep.

This is another study that points to the importance sleep to memory retention – something shift workers and their managers should really care about.

Strategic Implications of Keeping Workers Safe from Harm – The Impact of Bullying at Work

Recently, the topic of bullying has hit the headlines in a big way. Painful stories of persecuted, harassed, and tormented high school and college students who have committed suicide, have shocked educators, parents, students, and the public-at-large. The emotional, verbal, and physical abuse that constitutes bullying is not anything new. But recent attention to adolescents’ cyber-bullying (e.g. harassing others using Facebook, Twitter, or Utube or by cell phone or e-mail) has taken concerns about protecting victims to a new level.

Last month the federal government told educators that civil rights laws obligated schools to prevent bullying. The “Dear Colleague” letter sent by the Department of Education to school administrators puts into clear words the fact that educators have a legal obligation to “protect students from student-on-student racial and national origin harassment, sexual and gender-based harassment, and disability harassment.” As a result, school districts and colleges around the country are cracking down on those students who terrorize and intimidate others who are supposed to be their peers. Society and workplaces change over time (Pynes 2009). Will the recent attention to student bullying have strategic management implications for the workplace? Clearly it will for schools. But, what will be the impact be to other employers?

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Getting on the Right Team

So much of work these days is team–based, requiring groups of diverse people to work together on complex or risky initiatives. Consider the challenges that shift working groups face – like workers overseeing our nuclear power safety, emergency medical teams, miners working deep underground, shift workers on oil rigs around the world…..How can work be any more complex or risky than in these environments?

A recent study co-authored by MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and Union College researchers, and published Sept. 30, in the advance online issue of the journal Science, addresses the cognitive capabilities of a team, as opposed to the intelligence of individuals. The study found that collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well is linked to the number of women in the group. The researchers reported that groups whose members had higher levels of “social sensitivity” were more collectively intelligent. The teams containing more women demonstrated greater social sensitivity and in turn greater collective intelligence.

So what is meant by the term socially sensitive? In the case of this study, it meant discerning emotions from looking at people’s faces. For an excellent book that will help you to improve your ability to read people’s faces, look up Emotions Revealed by psychologist Paul Ekman. The book shows how the following emotions are revealed through facial expression (including photos!).
1. Grief, sadness
2. Anger
3. Surprise
4. Contentment, Enjoyment, sensory pleasures
5. Fear
6. Disgust, contempt

Interestingly, the average and maximum intelligence of individual group members did not significantly predict the performance of their groups overall. Having a lot of smart people in the group didn’t automatically cause the group to rise to the top. In the study, 699 people were placed in groups with two to five members. The groups worked together on tasks ranging from puzzles to negotiations, brainstorming, games and complex rule-based assignments. Only later, when analyzing the data, did the researchers notice that the number of women in a group seemed to predict higher functioning teams.

Obviously, many men are also socially sensitive. The study researchers stated that they believed that having group members with higher social sensitivity is better regardless of whether they are male or female. Perhaps it would be good to study the social sensitivity of shift workers. After adjusting for the impact of sleep deprivation, shift workers are probably a pretty socially sensitive group. After all, it takes a certain amount of social smarts to work 24/7 and stay safe and healthy and connected with family and friends. And, these jobs do require a heightened amount of teamwork for success.

©2010 Circadian Age, Inc. ‘Working Nights’

Extra Sleep Improves Performance, Alertness and Mood

According to a new study being presented tomorrow at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, getting extra sleep over an extended period of time improves athletic performance, alertness and mood.  In this small study, football player participants extended their sleep for seven to eight weeks during the season, obtaining as much sleep as possible and aiming for a minimum of ten hours of sleep each night.  By substantially increasing their length of sleep, the players decreased daytime sleepiness and fatigue and felt increased vigor towards the end of their season.  For more details click here.  This study supports other research indicating that sleep improves the performance, alertness and mood of shift workers.

Insomniacs with Nighttime Awakenings Have a Huge Impact on Health Care Costs and Workforce Management

Did you know that 30-40% of adults report some symptoms of insomnia within any given year?  But that’s nothing…..according to the National Sleep Foundation, over 60% of people who work shifts report that they suffer from insomnia.  And, 30% of shift workers claim that they’re excessively tired all the time.  People who work shifts are twice as likely to fall asleep at the wheel as those working during the day-time.  Continue Reading…

Restorative Sleep Improves Memory and Creativity

Johah Lehrer has written  a terrific summary pointing to what we gain and what we lose when we don’t get enough sleep.  Watching his wife sleep comfortably and soundly, while he lies awake with insomnia, Lehrer reviews the literature, touching on how the brain replays our own experiences over and over again, sketching them deeply into the neural networks of our brains.  This cements our long term memories.  Lehrer also points out that REM sleep helps make us more creative and lets us integrate new information into our problem solving. 

To read the entire article, click here.  

Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine. He’s the author of “How We Decide” and “Proust Was A Neuroscientist” and blogs at The Frontal Cortex.

Can Music Calm a Shift Worker’s Soul – and Improve Sleep as Well?

Where can you find Coldplay, Betty Buckley, The Beastie Boys, Bruce Hornsby, and Vanessa Carleton all working together? Seems like an unlikely group, doesn’t it?

These musicians and many other creative types are big supporters of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF). Created in 1995, IMNF was founded “to restore, maintain and improve people’s physical, emotional and neurologic functioning through the systematic use of music.” IMNF collaborates with researchers and practitioners around the world to advance the understanding and application of the power of music to promote healing and wellness. Some of IMNF’s most significant research and startling findings are in the areas of music and its impact on language, memory, and recovery from nerve injury.

How does music affect shift workers? Should it be listened to at work? Does it help you fall asleep? Can it lower stress when coping with variable schedules?
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The Connection Between Safety and Teamwork – It’s all about Communication and Taking Workers’ Individual Differences into Account!

Starting as young children, we’re taught about the importance of teamwork.  For example, we might have learned to work together to bring the groceries in from the car – maybe one person brought the bags into the house, another took them into the kitchen, another unpacked them, and someone else put the food away in the cabinets and fridge.  It felt fun working together at something; the experience was certainly more enjoyable than anyone doing the whole job on their own.  And, we could see that this four person exercise accomplished the task in a quarter of the time it would take one person to do the whole thing (if you were lucky enough to have four people to pitch in and help!).

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”  

As adults we’re told that teamwork is critical to achieving success in our jobs too.  But, is this really the case?

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Working Nights is on the Radio and the Internet!

We are now on WBZ Radio 1030!

Working Nights on Drowsy Driving

Here’s one of our new Working Nights internet cartoons!

Knowledge of Brain Research will Separate Successful Operations from Others

Research about the brain is leading to amazing results. New discoveries can help us understand ways that the brain may restrict shift workers from maximizing their potential – and – give us more ideas about what can be done about it. Topics ranging from how training provides our brains with greater processing speed and an enhanced ability to multi-task to how our brains control our reaction to invasion of our personal space are covered in this post. Whether its figuring out how people from different cultures can get along better to why getting more stage four sleep is important to learning from training, each of these new brain related studies are important for human resources, safety, and health professionals in any shift work environment to be aware of. And, they are critical for shift workers themselves to understand, as well.
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Is Moonlighting Poised to Return, and if so, What Should Employers and Employees Do About it?

As the economy turns, it’s likely that more people will start taking second jobs. Added employment security and the need to double up on paychecks to make up for losses during the recession will drive people in this direction. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.6 million Americans held multiple jobs during the first five months of this year, or 5% of all employees, about the same as last year. During earlier economic boom periods, moonlighting has increased. For example, at the end of 1989 over 7.2 million Americans worked more than one job, an increase of 25% since 1985. And, by 1997, 8.5% worked more than one job, almost another 20% increase. Now, during more difficult financial times, perhaps it’s not surprising that the numbers are down a bit.

But, the downward trend seems poised for a quick uptick as the economy improves and employers supplement their workforce with part timers rather than bulk up on full-time employees.
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