Working Nights

Differences Between Men and Women at Work – We Need Both Sexes!

Women continue to be a significant force in the workplace; the numbers of working women are gaining on working men. The Bureau of Labor statistics reported this June that women held 49.8% of the U.S jobs. Here are some trends:

• Women have been gaining the vast majority of positions in the few sectors of the economy that are growing (health care, education, and government).

• Through June, men had lost 74% of the 6.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began in December 2007. Men have lost more than 3 million jobs in construction and manufacturing alone.

• The gender hiring trend is really extreme in local government’s 14.6 million-person workforce. Cities, schools, water authorities and other local jurisdictions have cut 86,000 men during the recession – while adding 167,000 women.

• As a result, at the end of October the jobless rate for women was 8.1% compared to 10.7% for men.

What do these trends mean for men?
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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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Workplace Bullying Increases Sleep Disorder Risk – Already a Problem for Shift Workers

Bullying in the workplace can range from one extreme – physical violence and homicide, to verbal insults, threats, teasing, ridiculing, and making false accusations – at the other end. Sometimes bullies use name-calling, talking about a person behind their back, ignoring a person, and making false accusations to set a co-worker up for failure. The targeted person may be a boss, insubordinate, or peer. No matter who’s being targeted, bullying in the workplace has been proven to decrease morale amongst all workers, and if allowed to continue, bullying will detrimentally impact business results, possibly in a material way. A new study has found that current or past bullying is associated with increased sleep disturbances. Makes sense, right? A person who is being bullied is probably a nervous wreck, so having trouble sleeping seems logical. But, it turns out that bullying has detrimental effects on sleep even when it’s being experienced indirectly – by observing it as a co-worker.
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Working with People from Different Ethnic Backgrounds

In a short time, the current designation of “minority” will lose its meaning. By 2042 minorities are expected to become the majority of the population, and even sooner the majority of children will be minorities. This shift will bring increasing changes to the workforce, as even now some shift work fields have up to twice as many minority workers as white workers. Despite this, many of the managers of these companies are white. Understanding diversity and overcoming educational inequalities will remain extremely important for employee well-being and company productivity.
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Redefining Shift Workers and Recognizing Common Themes Across Industries

Americans have been known to complain about picking up the phone to call technical support and being greeted by a voice that is clearly from the other side of the globe. But shift workers, especially those who work frequent night shifts, should recognize a common colleague on the other end of the line. As more and more companies set up call centers and tech support in India and China, workers there learn to talk with American accents, make hip references to American pop culture, and most of all, to stay up long nights because of the time difference between our countries. This Chicago Tribune article shows how India is accepting the excitement and the difficulty of a new generation of shift workers. Having come along way from the mills and assembly lines of the 1800’s, ideas of shift work continue to evolve and globalize. Read this article…