"Organizations don't have a tool to effectively measure and manage fatigue, so it's very difficult for them to know how much of a problem it is."
This week, Dr. Logan F. Martin and James Junkin are joined by Marcus de Guingand, Managing Director at Third Pillar of Health, to discuss his workplace fatigue research.
Marcus's team gathered data from 795 participants across construction and transportation industries, tracking nearly 6,000 working days. What they found: 48% of workers aren't getting the minimum 7 hours of sleep before work, 81% are carrying sleep debt, and while fatigue accounts for 20% of road traffic collisions and 13% of workplace injuries, most companies have no idea if fatigue played a role in their incidents because they don't have tools to measure it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
⚠️ Organizations don't have tools to measure fatigue. Most companies have no idea if fatigue played a role in their incidents because they can't measure it. If they knew fatigue accounted for 20% of crashes and 13% of injuries, they'd be discussing it at board level.
⚠️ Fatigue costs $1,800 per employee per year. That's $640 in healthcare, $620 in productivity, and $545 in absenteeism. For a 100-person company, that's enough money to hire an extra worker instead of pushing everyone beyond safe limits.
⚠️ Workers can't self-diagnose fatigue impairment. Research shows that as workers get more fatigued, they struggle to identify hazards and eventually reach a point where even if they see a hazard, they physically can't avoid it.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Marcus de Guingand is the managing director of Third Pillar of Health, home of Alert-Risk, the sleep health self-assessment as well as the MyAlertness and Shift-Risk apps. Marcus recently completed two major studies of fatigue across multiple industries, gathering over 137,000 data points from 795 workers across approximately 6,000 separate working days using the custom-built Shift-Risk app. His team created a new biomathematical model of fatigue with three modules: accident and incident investigation, Individual Risk Assessment (15-minute windows of fatigue risk), and Works Planning (identifying when fatigue risk is elevated in shift patterns).
RESOURCES:
Alert-Risk App: www.alert-risk.com
Third Pillar of Health: www.thirdpillarofhealth.com
Marcus de Guingand LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusdeguingand/
ABOUT THE RISK MATRIX PODCAST
Buckle up, safety pros! The Risk Matrix brings you a weekly podcast masterclass in risk management, hosted by two industry titans:
Dr. L.F. Martin: 32-year veteran, Board of Global EHS Credentialing Impact Award winner
James Junkin: Trainer of 40,000+ safety pros, ASSP's 2024 Safety Professional of the Year
They're tackling the topics that keep safety managers up at night featuring guests from regulatory bodies to safety directors and everything in between.
Every Tuesday: The tough conversations safety managers need to have. Critical insights from safety experts. Real-world strategies. Actionable solutions.
The Risk Matrix Podcast is powered by Veriforce: Bringing workers home safe from high-hazard jobs. Learn more at www.veriforce.com
