Shiftwork/Jetlag

Shiftwork
Employees work when they are meant to sleep and vise versa, whilst rotating shifts each week. This disrupts links between EZ's and biological rhytms. As a week is not long enough for resynchronisation, they are left in a permanent state of jetlag, this impairs performance and increases stress. It is interesting to note that the three mile island nuclear power station in '79 and that the nuclear disaster in chernobyl '68 occured because of of decision failures in the early mornings. 

Support comes from Czeisler in 1982 who studied a plant in Utah which he discovered sleep difficulty, health problems and work related stress. He persuaded the company to increase shift rotation from 7-21 days and change to a phase delay system (forward each time) After 9 months work satisfaction had increased and factory output was higher as they had longer to readjust.

Knutsson claims that over working shifts for 15 years, workers are 3x more…