Fatigue Management Policy

What is fatigue?

Fatigue is more than feeling tired and drowsy. In a work context, fatigue is a state of mental and/or physical exhaustion that reduces a person’s ability to perform work safely and effectively. It can occur because of prolonged or intense mental or physical activity, sleep loss and/or disruption of the internal body clock.

Signs of fatigue include:

tiredness even after sleep
reduced hand-eye coordination or slow reflexes
short term memory problems and an inability to concentrate
blurred vision or impaired visual perception
a need for extended sleep during days off work.

Why is fatigue a problem?

Fatigue can adversely affect safety at the workplace. Fatigue reduces alertness which may lead to errors and an increase in incidents and injuries, particularly when:

driving vehicles
undertaking critical tasks that require a high level of concentration, such as lifting heavy stuff

The effects of fatigue can be short or long term. In the short term a person may show the signs or report the symptoms of fatigue outlined below.

excessive yawning or falling asleep at work
short term memory problems and an inability to concentrate
noticeably reduced capacity to engage in effective interpersonal communication
impaired decision-making and judgement
reduced hand-eye coordination or slow reflexes
other changes in behaviour, for example repeatedly arriving late for work
increased rates of unplanned absence.

A fatigued worker may also experience symptoms not obvious to others including:

feeling drowsy
headaches
dizziness
difficulty concentrating
blurred vision or impaired visual perception
a need for extended sleep during days off work.

Your responsibilities as a worker

Workers have a duty to take reasonable care for their own safety and health and that their acts or omissions don’t adversely affect the health or safety of others.

To reduce the risk of being involved in a work incident caused by fatigue, you should:

comply with all MWAV policies and procedures relating to fatigue
understand your sleep, rest and recovery needs and obtain adequate rest and sleep away from work
seek medical advice and assistance if you have or are concerned about a health condition that affects your sleep and/or causes fatigue
assess your own fitness for work before commencing work
monitor your level of alertness and concentration while you are at work
look out for signs of fatigue in the people you work with
in consultation with your team mate, customer and the office, take steps to manage fatigue, for example take a fatigue break, maintain hydration (drink water), do some stretching , adjust the work environment (lighting, temperature)
talk to your supervisor or manager if you foresee or experience being impaired by fatigue likely to create a health and safety risk e.g. because of a health condition, excessive work demands or personal circumstances
assess your fatigue levels after work and take suitable commuting options (e.g. avoiding driving if fatigued).

What will Man With A Van do about it?

Each Man With A Van employee is responsible for ensuring that they recognise signs of fatigue and the impact on themselves and others and report immediately to their supervisor or manager when fatigue and lack of sleep are impacting on their individual wellbeing and workplace safety. Once alerted to potential fatigue issues, Man With A Van will:

review that employee's recently completed shifts and identify if excessive hours or particularly arduous work tasks have been undertaken
review that employee's upcoming shifts, and modify with the worker's consent as appropriate
assign that employee to shorter or less arduous shifts for that week, where available.
maximise break times between shifts

Risk Management

Managers will adopt an ongoing risk management approach, in consultation with their employees, to identify hazards, assess risks and eliminate or minimise risks associated with fatigue. As part of this approach the following fatigue hazards will be considered:

Work schedule
Rostering arrangements
Travel
Mentally demanding work
Emotionally demanding work
Physically demanding work
How the work is organised
Cultural norms relating to work hours
Environmental factors
Personal factors, family demands or health factors

Once a fatigue hazard is identified a risk management approach must be taken, the risk of potential harm needs to be assessed in terms of its likelihood, and its impact on employees, their teams, the whole organisation and the public, identify ways to control the risks and put in place measurement and review processes. There are potentially significant consequences of fatigue in terms of individual health and increased potential for accidents and injuries to occur. Fatigue can make other risks to health and safety worse.

Managers will put in place appropriate risk controls to reduce or eliminate fatigue-related risks, in consultation with employees. These may include the following:

Ensure all employees take adequate and regular meal and rest breaks by mandating a 30 minute lunch break each day, and providing access to paid fatigue breaks as required
Task rotation where possible for particularly demanding jobs (mentally, emotionally or physically)
Review rostering arrangements i.e after a change in work processes, if an incident has occurred
Avoid work arrangements that include multiple days of excessive work hours
For our office staff, scheduling short breaks to change posture and refresh concentration
Schedule high risk work during mid-morning where possible
Avoid long travel times including travelling in the early morning (before sunrise) or late at night
Avoid driving for extended periods without taking a break or changing drivers
Ensure clear work processes and effective planning is in place to deal with workload changes due to absenteeism, staff on leave or seasonal work pressures
Supervisors will notify their managers and colleagues of any injuries and potential fatigue issues in their daily report handover

If a manager reasonably believes that an employee is displaying signs of fatigue and their performance poses risks, the manager must direct the employee to cease performing work, take a break, to have an adequate rest or temporarily re-allocate their work to reduce risk.

Managers will encourage employees to report any concerns they may have about work-related fatigue directly to them or to the General Manager - Humans.

Managers will follow up and review the effectiveness of the implemented risk controls. Recurring problems relating to work performance may lead to disciplinary action if fatigue guidelines are not followed.

Rostering arrangements

The following principles will apply in our work schedule arrangements:

All working hours and rosters will be designed so that they allow for good sleep opportunity and enough recovery time between work days or shifts for travelling and sleeping (>10 hours but considering allowance for 7-8 hours’ sleep plus travel and time to unwind)
There will be access to on-call workers for unplanned leave, emergencies or where workload increases. This may include the use of “depot spares” and re-assigning capable office staff
Wherever possible individual choice of shift times will be allowed to accommodate personal out-of-work commitments.

Long distance travel

We recognise the risks of driving whilst tired and travelling long distances. The following principles will apply for long distance travel arrangements wherever that travel cannot be avoided:

Employees are expected to have a good night’s sleep before driving. Should an employee present to their shift in a fatigued state, they must liaise with the daily manager to review their shift for that day
Phones staff require management approval/risk assessment for driving over 5 hours in a single day. Should this be scheduled, MWAV management will assign two drivers to the day.
Driving should not exceed 10-12 hour shifts inclusive of appropriate breaks, and considering travel home. This may be relevant if staff have to travel from satellite depots to start/end their shift.

Future work to be done

Does this policy do enough to combat the situation of:
- Long day of heavy lifting (eg 8h job, 30min break) in high heat. Staff have a long (+1h) drive home at the end of the job. Higher risk of a microsleep and catastrophic vehicle accident if this happens.
Lifting time vs driving time vs shift length of day 1: how do we rank how fatiguing a day is? How to we schedule those staff members for the following day? Do we send them on a long drive? Short day?
Can we objectively measure how fatigued a staff member is?
How often should we be rotating drivers? Eg every hour/2 hours etc? This will influence how many “double driver” shifts need to be allocated. How do we monitor if those driver changes have occurred?
How will this interact with the manual handling policy
- Eg Graeme did a job from Berwick to Junction village. 9 hour day, 8 hours of lifting. This was a fatiguing day.

Review

This policy will be reviewed annually. All employees will receive communication about the requirements of this policy and any changes arising from the reviews.

Authorised by: Matthew Windsor, General Manager Date: 5 December 2023

Date last reviewed: 12/2/2025

Next review date:

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