Safety Professionals do a fine job of determining the "root
causes" or "contributing factors" of incidents in
order to prevent the next accident. Executives might apply this
analysis to employee performance issues.
Of necessity, employers often analyze performance and attitude
problems from the standpoint of ensuring that a termination is
legally defensible. Let's shift our focus and try to determine
the contributing factors to employee performance or judgment
issues, and start with an often-overlooked contributing factor ...
employee fatigue.
It goes without saying that sleep deprivation also affects the
judgment and reflexes often required to work safely. Simple
statistical analysis demonstrates that a disproportionate number of
workplace injuries and fatalities occur on the last day of the
week, often toward the end of the shift. We casually comment that
workers were tired or distracted because it was the end of the
workweek. But what do we do about this
