Strategy to Deal with Stress and Fatigue at Workplace

Mental Health is as important as physical health. Stress and fatigue cause challenges to individuals in today’s workplace demands. Long-term stress and fatigue may have the potential to effect mental health. Therefore, workplaces should be aware of what causes stress and fatigue. Implement processes on how to overcome it.

Stress

It is an individual’s reaction to a challenging or dangerous situation. It is our body’s natural response to decide the next mode of action. It is very important to know that stress is a condition that is causing worry to the working people undergoing stress. Also, causes of stress to the employer. It diverts the employee’s focus on safety. It affects productivity and efficiency of the employee and the employer.

When individuals feel stressed, they think that the demands of the situation are greater than their resources available for them to deal with their situation.

For example:

Someone who feels comfortable speaking in public may not worry about giving a presentation. While someone who is not comfortable in speaking may feel pressure and stress about an impending presentation.

It can have an impact on mind and body, in fact, overall health.  Our body has been designed and pre-programmed with a set of automatic responses to deal with stressful conditions. Our body continuously responds to all types of stress during our lifetime. The real challenge is that our body responds in the same way irrespective of the types of stress. If someone experiences stress for an extended period, it will activate the system of responses. The body does not get a chance to turn off.

Stress at work is a common condition that results in harmful physical and emotional responses. This can occur when there is a struggle between the work demands, people, tasks, processes and the availability of resources.

Helpful strategies to reduce the impacts of stress are:

• Exercise does help our body in overcoming stress to release feel-good hormones like endorphins that help in reducing stress and in turn it can help you to feel less stressed
• Organise your work
• Breathe in/out and exercise deep breathing
• Take a time out with family
• Meditation

Fatigue

Fatigue is a devastating but commonly occurring form of illness. We all might experience this at some point in our lives. It is considered as the state of mind, feeling extremely tired, exhausted, or feeling sleepy. It usually occurs as a result of as insufficient or deprived sleep, prolonged mental or physical exertion, or extended periods of being in stress or anxiety.

It manifests in the form of reduced alertness, inattentiveness, Indecisiveness, weakness, exhaustion, tiredness, lethargy, sleepiness, drowsiness. Long-term fatigue can cause mental and physical disorders.

Now let us discuss how fatigue can be hazardous.

What causes fatigue?

The main causes are:

• Lack of quality sleep or disturbed sleep,
• Time of working or driving when you would normally be resting i.e. 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. in the early morning or the afternoon period e.g. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.,
• Environment, repetitious tasks,
• Sleeping disorders such as sleep apnoea.

Fatigue can:

• Reduced productivity,
• Increase the likelihood of mistakes in the work,
• Impaired motor skills and impaired coordination,
• Inability for decision making,
• Risk-taking,
• Falling asleep,
• Inability to deal with stress,
• Poor communication,
• Lack of sleep, and
• Reduction in productivity.

All of these can result in accidents causing serious injuries, fatality, illness, low productivity and damage to property and environment.

Fatigue Risk Management

It is the process of identifying the hazards and their consequences and evaluating the risks associated with the personnel, equipment, environment and assets.

Therefore, it is very important for an organisation or any professional to include a plan, which includes fatigue training such as fatigue management. Fatigue Management training is one of the best methods to familiarise with the hazards and to know one can manage fatigue.

Online WHS Fatigue Training is provided online and it provides an easy alternative to onsite or classroom training, which is suitable to companies who want to cut down their expenses but still  comply with WHS regulations.

Online fatigue management training and below associated courses are conducted at WHS and Training Compliance Solutions Pty Ltd are:

• Fatigue Management training
• Blended online MHFA workplace training
• Youth MHFA – Mental Health First Aid training
• Mental Health First Aid Refresher

Contact WHS and Training Compliance Solutions Pty Ltd for further information on our training programs.

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