According to a recent article at Working Nights, companies that have implemented a shift work lifestyle training program tailored to their company needs receive overwhelming benefits for both employees and the company.

On average, shift workers generate more more health care costs than other workers.  Shift workers experience an increased risk of a range of diseases such as cardiovascular, obesity and sleep apnea.  Their social and personal life are also effected by their working hours.

The good news is that the health of shift workers can be improved with the right training.

In addition, it has been found that employee morale is higher amongst companies that provide shift work lifestyle training.  Nearly, 60% of employees at companies that provide shift work lifestyle training rank their morale as good or excellent compared to 35% for staff at companies without shift work training.

Other benefits include:

• A reduction of health care costs between 17-37%.
• Reduced safety incidents
• Reduced worker’s compensation premiums
• Increase of worker productivity by 39%.

In extended 24-hour operations, a well-designed shift schedule or roster is unlikely to provide adequate protection from worker fatigue.  An integrated risk management system incorporates data analysis and training towards an effort of reducing fatigue and reducing a company’s costs, risks, and liabilities.

To find out more about shift work training, click here.

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1. Ensure that there are common goals between management and staff. One way to accomplish this is by defining desired outcomes for the unit/business and measuring the unit’s or business’ success towards accomplishing those outcomes on a regular basis.
2. Explain why. Many supervisors just tell their staff what to do. However, informing them why tasks are done a particular way, or why certain behaviors are required goes a long way towards eliminating worker/supervisor friction, ensuring that the tasks and behaviors are actually done correctly, and that improvements in the workplace occur through suggestions from workers who are performing those tasks on a regular basis.
3. Be results oriented. Many workplaces value time over results. However, unless a job function is time-based (e.g. customer service phone representative), reward the results of someone’s work more than their face time on the job. A worker who works a normal work day but produces high quality output and new ideas is more valuable than the worker who spends more hours at work but produces lower quality work and has fewer new ideas.
4. Promote balance. Many workplaces want their employee’s top priority to be their job; over family, over enjoying life, and maybe even over life itself. In my opinion this leads to employee burn-out and many employees eventually working on “auto-pilot”. The best employees are employees who have a balanced life. Whether they balance work with family, playing softball, donating their time to a not for profit, or going to the movies is irrelevant. When an employee has balance and works for a business that promotes balance, when that business needs him/her to go through a period of time where work comes first, they will do it and be effective.
5. Demand the best. Don’t accept workers being just okay. Remind them that they weren’t hired to do a so-so job. They were hired and are being paid to do a good job.
6. Hold workers accountable. Your workers are adults so treat them as adults. Don’t act like an enabling parent. Don’t accept excuses, don’t allow them to slide through, don’t allow them to point fingers. You’d be surprised how holding workers accountable results in good workers performing at their best and feeling fulfilled at work; and bad workers (probably performing a lot worse than you realize) quitting or starting to look for work elsewhere.
7. Reward properly. This means both rewarding the right people and rewarding them appropriately (no big reward for a small accomplish). This includes verbal praise as well as tangible rewards such as raises and bonuses. Nothing disrupts the smooth operation and effectiveness of a workplace more than the best workers not getting the recognition/rewards they deserve. Therefore you need to be aware not only of the actual performance of your staff, but their perceptions of who are the best workers. Then you need to take steps to ensure that their perceptions coincide with your employees’ actual performance by communicating what you value.
8. Encourage creativity. Not everyone is creative. Therefore, creativity needs to be part of “going above and beyond” not part of the expected work product unless a person’s job is a creative position (e.g. writing advertising copy). That means that creative employees may not be creative on the job since it isn’t part of their standard job functions. So encourage creativity by always responding positively to creative suggestions (unless they are clearly ridiculous) and reward useful creativity with excellent rewards.
9. Provide ongoing feedback. Don’t leave your employees waiting for their annual review to know how well they are performing on the job. Also, don’t wait for them to ask how they are doing. Provide ongoing feedback; positive feedback to your top employees (but also include areas where they can improve) and constructive feedback for others (don’t just let them know they need to improve, but give them steps to take to help them improve their performances). Also let your employees know that they really need to worry when they are receiving no feedback from you. For the under-performing employee, lack of feedback on their performance means you do not think that employee can improve, so you aren’t wasting your time talking to him/her about his/her job performance. This is also a good way to send a message to employees you would like to look for work elsewhere.
10. Build an effective team. All managers obviously promote teamwork. However, there are some who build teams of workers who all have skills and knowledge that overlap their own, but at a lower level. Other managers build teams with workers with skills and knowledge that compliment their skills and knowledge. You would be surprised how many take the first approach since they either are intimidated by employees that know more than them in a specific area, or they do not have confidence that they can make good management decisions on topics that they are not knowledgeable on. However, that is not the way to build an effective team. Build your team with employees that have skills and knowledge that you do not possess, and have confidence in your ability to think logically and make solid management decisions.

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(image credit: Perantu Sepi Lodge @ flickr)

With so much of our life devoted to paid employment, it’s only fair to say that you might as well be happy doing it, otherwise life becomes a bit of a drag.

And if you’re not feeling perky at work or you’re unfortunately having to work with a grumpy staff member, here are some websites to help:

http://www.workhappynow.com/

http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/09/twelve-tips-to-create-a-happier-and-more-productive-workplace.html

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