Working Nights

2010 Sleep in America Poll Released!

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has just released the 1st poll to examine sleep among four ethnic groups in the United States: Asians, Blacks/African Americans, Hispanics and Whites-the 2010 Sleep in America Poll. Although significant differences in the sleep habits and attitudes of each group are revealed, there are also a number of interesting similarities. The poll found that more than three fourths of respondents from each ethnic group agree that poor sleep is associated with health problems. It also showed that each group reports similar experiences missing work or family functions because of fatigue. This is of extreme significance to shift workers who routinely average less sleep than day workers.

The NSF is committed to understanding people’s sleep needs and giving them the tools necessary to get the optimum amount of rest. Read more about the poll and its findings at the NSF’s website…

Try and Take Full Advantage of Recovery Days – Especially over the Holidays

There have been a number of studies done on the importance of recovery days after working shifts. It’s logical….our bodies (and minds) can’t work at odd hours, long days, or rapidly rotating schedules, without being seriously impacted. Now, a few days before Christmas and a week before New Year’s, almost everyone is suffering from depleted energy. But as we continue to push ourselves to persevere, saying, “Just hold on and get through the holidays; it’ll be over soon,” we seek our ways to cope. Often we do this in a robotic-like fashion, not even consciously. We might drink a little too much hoping to calm ourselves down for sleep, pop pain-killers to reduce our aches and pains from all the running around, or skip dinner in favor of Doritos because we’re too tired to cook.

Sound familiar? These are the feelings, vegetative state, and survival tactics most shift workers face on a regular basis, not just around the holidays. If you work shifts, you know.

Back to recovery days……
Read this article…

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?

Read this article…

Working Night’s President Featured on WBZ 1030 Call-in Program – Friday, October 23, 2009 at Midnight

Working Night’s President, Betsy Connolly, discussed the positives and challenges of working shift work  on The Jordan Rich Show starting at midnight. Callers commented on their strategies of managing shift work lifestyles and asked questions.  Ms. Connolly also spoke about how shift workers and their families have used the Working Nights calendars to better manage work/life balance when working shifts for 25 years.

Listen to the tape of the program by clicking here.  You’ll be brought to our press release and news section.  Search for the blue and red WBZ logo shown above for the posting.

Shift Worker Liquid Intake Extremely Important!

Most shift workers admit they don’t have the best understanding of nutrition and that they find it challenging to follow good nutritional habits. It makes sense that sticking with good nutritional meals can be difficult when working shifts – most shift workers admit they eat what they can find with the least effort – which is often food from vending machines, 24/7 convenience stores, or fast food restaurants. What doesn’t make sense is that shift workers don’t have better knowledge about their own nutrition. Certainly with education, just as with everyone, shift workers’ nutritional awareness can be exponentially increased.

We often read about nutrition and relate it immediately to the food we eat. We’ve written in other posts about the importance of eating healthy food – see “Be Careful What you Eat When Working Shift Work.” However, liquid sustenance is a significant part of our daily intake as well. When we’re awake, we drink water, juice, soda, coffee, tea, alcoholic beverages, and some of us drink liquid nutritional supplements too. What’s important about the liquids we put in our body? The essential information to know is about hydration and dehydration, calories and caloric content, and how where you live, the job you perform and your overall activity level impacts your body’s need for liquids.
Read this article…

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!

A Pitch to President Obama – How About a Shift Workers Day?

2010 Working Nights Pocket Calendar 3.5 x 7

In moments of great stress and loss, our immediate tendency is to point the finger and blame those we see as having had the responsibility for predicting, and thereby preventing, the crisis. Most recently, experts responsible for issuing emergency warning alerts have been criticized for their slow response to an 8.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami followed by even more quakes earlier this week in the Samoa Islands region (150 deaths). This was followed by Wednesday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake in the southern Sumatra region of Indonesia which has reportedly killed at least 700 (and many are still missing – 30,000 homes destroyed). Now emergency workers and aid groups are scrambling 24/7 to respond to the havoc and devastation resulting from these disasters.

It takes you back to 911, Katrina, or the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that killed 150,000 people. People working 24/7, working nights, evenings, and weekends for multiple days in a row! How do we get through these emotionally draining and often physically taxing periods?
Read this article…

Be Careful When and What You Eat, When Working Shift Work – No Greasy Fries and Burgers Anymore! Sorry!

Our bodies circadian rhythms regulate when we should eat, sleep, and be active. However, when we work shift work we don’t allow our bodies to adhere to these regulations, especially when we are working nights. We run around working, when we should be sleeping and inactive, and we eat at night when our bodies are normally shut down and not focused on digestion. We all know it doesn’t help us to maintain our weight when we eat junk food at night while sitting in front of the television. But what causes the problem? Is it the calories in the junk food? Would it make a difference if we chose to nibble on carrots and celery instead? Or is it because we’re eating late at night? A recent study in the journal Obesity, has found that when we eat may be more of a driver of weight gain than what we eat. This obviously has significant impact for shift workers.
Read this article…

Learning from Past Mistakes about Managing Overtime after a Recession

After the last recession was over in 2002, overtime spiked at many extended hours operations and so did accidents and injuries on the job. After a recession, managers are usually gun-shy about hiring and for good reason – they want to feel confident that demand is truly back so they don’t generate oversupply. There are starting to be some early signs of improvement in the current economic climate, which means we may see overtime starting to creep up soon. Now’s the time to start planning in order to prevent accidents and injuries resulting from overtime.
Read this article…

Making the Best of Shift Work and Parenting – It’s Not Easy!

Many employees with children work nonstandard hours. The relationship between shift work and parent-child interaction has been studied by many. For example, one study found that parents working certain nonstandard shifts, especially those working nights and weekends, were less likely to eat dinner with their children (of course this depended in part on which shift the parents worked). Other studies point that some nonstandard shifts have a positive correlation with whether parents had breakfast with their children.
Read this article…

Another Important Reason to Assess Levels of Vitamin D

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among those with diabetes. And, according to researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, people with diabetes and low Vitamin D have more than double the risk of cardiovascular disease. One possible reason (according to the study’s authors) – diabetics who are deficient in vitamin D don’t process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels and increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Why is this important to shift workers? Because some studies have shown that shift workers may have a greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes and shift workers are also are at a greater risk of having a vitamin D deficiency. This study may provide more support for why shift workers have a greater likelihood of suffering from cardiovascular disease. And, it also sheds some light on a possible way to reduce the risk of heart disease – besides exercise, good nutrition, and maintaining proper weight, make sure you get enough vitamin D.
Read this article…

Positive Benefits of Working Shift Work

Let’s face it, many people who work shift work only talk about the negative. But for some, it’s the positive aspects that lead the way. There are certain lifestyle benefits that can come from working shifts. For example, some people choose to work shift work for social, financial, or lifestyle reasons. Read this article…

Families and Friends of Shift Workers – How to Help

Shift work can cause difficulty creating and maintaining relationships, and often it’s hard for others to realize special challenges shift workers face. However, shift work is by no means a personal issue. Over 55 million Americans work nonstandard work schedules so that up to 150 million people are directly impacted by shift work schedules, based on US census statistics of household size. But shift work does not only affect the immediate family, but also the neighbors that get called in to babysit, the grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles that might not get to see their relatives who work on holidays, the friends who want to hang out on nights and weekends- everyone who wants to support the shift worker as much as they can. This article helps anyone who has someone who works shift work in their lives. Read this article…

Running on Empty- Safe Driving on a Shift Work Schedule

While people worry about the dangers of sky diving, bungee jumping, and other death-defying activities, in fact one of the most dangerous things you can do is turn that little metal key in your car every day. In the U.S., someone dies in a car accident once every 13 seconds. Since shift workers experience many of the symptoms that are the most frequent causes of car crashes- fatigue and drowsiness, nodding off from lack of sleep, drug use, and use of sleep aids- driving safety is especially important from shift workers. The perils of a commute after a long day (or especially after working nights) can be deadly.
Read this article…

Integrating Shift Workers Into the Overall Business Environment

Happy employees are productive. Happy shift workers gain more satisfaction out of their shifts, have better levels of fitness and more restful sleep, and cost their company less in absences and health care costs. An efficient way to raise shift workers’ confidence level and performance is to emphasize their connection with the overall company, a tie that often goes over looked throughout the night shift hours. Since managers and more experienced workers most often work the day shift, though tiredness at night might require more care for the night shift to do the job safely and well. The absence of feedback and encouragement for people working nights and the potential of fewer training hours for shift workers does not take into account unique difficulties shift workers face. Making sure extended hours workers don’t get ignored ensures higher morale and productivity throughout the whole 24 hours. Read this article…