Identifying a significant fatigue management risk
A review of standard rostering practices for an essential service showed a prevalence of staff working 7 consecutive night shifts with only a single day to recover before returning to work.
This exposed both the organization and the workforce to high risk of a fatigue-related incident occurring.
The placement of this work cycle across partial weekends, combined with other roster criteria and high absenteeism meant the workforce was negatively impacted by the unpredictable scheduling, frequent changes, inequity of weekends and back shifts worked, multiple quick changes between shift start times, and single rest days with few whole weekends off. These instances were often in breach of Employee Agreement and Fatigue Management guidelines.
Orkest developed a set of rosters to provide essential operational coverage and predictable work hours for the workforce with regular breaks and weekends off. This also allowed the organisation to create a balance between full-time workers in the new standard rosters and those with flexible and part-time work arrangements.
