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RISKVUE ARCHIVE | FEATURE STORIES
Managing the Risks Of 24/7 Operations Through Seven-S™ Optimization
By Martin Moore-Ede, M.D., Ph.D., and William Siroi
Employers believe that good employees are highly adaptable. Employers also mistakenly believe that employees with the right attitude and motivation should be able to overcome fatigue and compensate for adversity. But such thinking is seriously flawed. Absolute 24/7 reliability can only be achieved if it is built directly into the systems, procedures and workplace environment from the ground up. Such reliability must avoid dependence on superhuman effort.
This drive for 24/7 reliability is summarized in a concept called Seven-S™ Optimization.1 The seven S’s are (1) Staffing, (2) Selection, (3) Schooling, (4) Scheduling, (5) Surroundings, (6) Screening and (7) Supporting. We explain these briefly below.
Staffing
The correct staffing level is vital to ensuring sustainable reliability. Staffing levels are often miscalculated, leading to overstaffing at certain times and understaffing at others. Vacation, sick leave, relief and special physiological factors have to be balanced to ensure 24/7 reliability while controlling costs. Overstaffing isn’t just a cost issue—it leads to distraction and under-motivation. Understaffing places the business at risk of fatigue-induced human error, cause by excessive use of overtime or forced short-notice changes in work-rest cycles.
Selection
In trying to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), most 24/7 companies avoid any pre-employment screening of an applicant’s adaptability to nightshift work. This is ironic, since researchers have only recently begun to understand how shiftwork affects people’s health. Now that such information is being disseminated, companies are hesitant to use it.
While the ADA should not deter managers from making adaptability to shiftwork part of their company’s selection process, one should certainly proceed with caution—and competent legal advice. Many managers are taking advantage of new tools for estimating shiftwork adaptability.2 At the very least, managers should develop a profile of their best night workers and augment their company’s hiring process to find people with similar traits.
Schooling
If one thinks of humans as computers, then employee training is like software. Unlike a computer however, humans’ ability to process data quickly and accurately is affected by their alertness. The missing element is training people to maintain their alertness at required levels.
This is not a radically new concept, and many organizations already use health awareness and wellness programs. These programs are an effort to improve work performance and absenteeism (and not incidentally, employee retention in tight labor markets) by encouraging exercise, weight loss, better sleep habits, quitting smoking, etc.
Wellness programs typically fall far short when it comes to the 24/7 workforce. What makes sense for daytime workers may not make sense, or be impractical, for nighttime workers. The solution is training specifically created for people who work at night—24/7 workforce training. The benefits of 24/7 workforce training can far outweigh the costs. But like so many programs, the benefits are likely to be short-lived if 24/7 workforce training is seen as a one-time project, rather than an on-going process.
Scheduling
There are a number of key factors that affect the physiological component of a shift schedule, including (1) length of shift, (2) shift pattern and (3) shift rotation.
The length of a shift is often the first issue that comes to mind when managers think about alertness and fatigue. In most cases the actual length is far less important than the time of day or the weekly pattern of the shifts being worked. The vast majority of studies on length of shift have found that alertness, performance and judgment are not significantly different on 8-hour shifts or 12-hour shifts. But shifts that run from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. are much harder than shifts from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The shift pattern refers to the importance of a regular, predictable shift schedule for maintaining health, safety and quality of life. Humans function best physiologically when they eat and sleep on a regular pattern. It is far easier to maintain a family and social life if one’s work schedule is predictable.
The shift rotation refers to the question of whether to rotate or fix the shifts. With fixed shifts, an individual worker always works at a given time of day—day, evening or night. Rotating shifts are where every employee works each shift some, but not all of the time. Fixed shifts are often popular in settings where worker seniority can be used to assign shifts. The advantage of a fixed shift is that it disrupts the sleeping patterns of fewer people. Where seniority is not an issue, most managers tend to prefer rotating shifts, as do many workers because rotating shifts seem inherently fairer.
Surroundings
Workplace ergonomics are of utmost importance in minimizing fatigue and managing risk in 24/7 shiftwork operations. This is a huge topic by itself. Two of the most important ergonomic factors to consider are lighting and temperature.
Bright lighting enhances alertness. Lighting levels should be set as high as 400 to 1,000 lux. The challenge is to increase the lighting level without raising glare to unacceptable levels. When glare becomes too great, people tend to turn off the lights, so proper illumination system design is key.
Cool temperatures also increase alertness, so it is important to keep the work environment from getting hot or stuffy. To the greatest extent possible, air should be kept moving and at a temperature of 65 to 68 degrees. If employees feel cold, encourage them to wear sweaters or sweatshirts rather than turn up the thermostat.
Screening
Most health-risk appraisal systems are not designed to recognize the special challenges of 24/7 operations. It is especially important to screen, monitor and address the health of nightshift workers. Health disorders can increase the risk of impaired performance and reduce one’s ability to sustain vigilance and motivation. The risk of developing coronary artery disease, heart attacks, gastrointestinal ulcers, sleep disorders and depression in 24/7 employees is more than double that of the general 9-to-5 population.
Shiftwork poses special challenges for those dealing with health problems. For example, people with diabetes or epilepsy, who would normally control these conditions with the help of medication, often find it more difficult to regulate these disorders when working shifts. Another health concern is obstructive sleep apnea. Studies have found that over 10 percent of shiftwork populations are at risk for this sleep disorder. Those with sleep apnea are not only susceptible to high blood pressure and heart disease, but also have two to three times the risk of falling asleep on the job or on the highway.
Supporting
Sustaining 24/7 human reliability often requires concerted efforts to update corporate policies and procedures. Important policy considerations include the timing of staff meetings, the work schedules of supervisors and managers, overtime rules and call-in procedures, the hours that cafeteria food is available, and the nutritional content of the food available to nightshift workers. Even some ideas that would be deemed unthinkable in a 9-to-5 office environment need to be considered, such as napping policies and napping facilities.
Summary
Sometimes it is not so bad to think of a person as a human machine. One would not dream of operating equipment without taking into account its design specs and operating manual. The same should be true for the human components of the 24/7 business.
The goal of Seven-S&#trade; Optimization is not soft-and-fuzzy, “touchy-feely”management. Rather, it is a calculated and systematic introduction of systems and procedures to boost the performance and safety of an operation’s human assets towards the levels one expects of the operation’s capital assets. Successfully managing the costs, risks and liabilities of operating around-the-clock is not only possible—it is necessary for survival in today’s competitive economy. 
Notes
(1) Seven-S&#trade; Optimization was developed by Dr. Martin Moore-Ede.
(2) Tools for estimating shiftwork adaptability include the Standard Shiftwork Index (SSI) developed in Europe by Folkard, Akerstadt, Kuaroth, et al.; the Fysink Inventory; Epworth Sleepiness Scale; Standard Morningness/Eveningness Profile, and the Shiftwork Adaptation Testing System, developed by Circadian Technologies, which combines all of the above plus additional proprietary testing instruments.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Martin Moore-Ede, M.D., Ph.D., is President of Circadian Technologies, Inc. Dr. Moore-Ede is a former professor at the Harvard Medical School and founder of the Institute for Circadian Physiology. He has worked with 24-hour companies around the world to implement tools and strategies for 24/7 workforce optimization, scheduling, and training. He can be reached at 800-284-5001 or mme@circadian.com.
William Sirois is Senior Vice President of Circadian Technologies, Inc., a Lexington, Massachusetts-based firm that provides training and consulting services to improve human performance, human reliability and employee retention in 24/7 operations. Mr. Sirois can be reached at 800-284-5001 or wsirois@circadian.com.
riskVue | The webzine for risk management professionals
November 2001
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