Tuesday, July 26, 2011

When Sleepiness and Fatigue Affect Job Performance

The job requires precision, quality control and conformance to specifications. An employee is consistently producing a defective product. The cause must be poor skill or aptitude. Maybe not. It may be sleepiness or mental fatigue.

Sleepiness is easy to recognize. Either the employee falls asleep during breaks or has a hard time maintaining alertness while working. They may have little energy and be slow to respond to information. They may often be late for work in the morning.

Though discipline is usually the first course of action, determining the cause of the sleepiness is a much better course of action. The employee might have a sleep disorder or be experiencing a circadian type / schedule mismatch. The employee can be sleep deprived because of various personal and family obligations that keep them from getting the sleep they need. Finally, there are a variety of medications and health conditons that can cause sleepiness as well.

Mental fatigue can also be a major contributor to poor job perfomance. Employees who are mentally fatigued simply cannot achieve the precision required either because the brain is overwhelmed with information or has habituated to a constant stream of non-differentiated information. These employees may recognize that mistakes are being made, but do not have the mental energy to respond or, in fact, to care.

A common symptom of mental fatigue is a glazed over look in the eyes, failure to respond to information, 'zoning out' or looking, but not seeing. We can experience these symptoms when driving for a long time on a straight stretch of road with little change in scenery.

The most effective remedy for maintaining alertness is frequent breaks. These breaks do not need to be long and simply require looking away from the work for a minute or two. Drinking water and deep breathing can also help to ensure that the brain has the resources it needs to keep working.

Though one can be fatigued without being sleepy, someone who starts with a high level of sleepiness will become fatigued much more quickly than someone who is well rested.