Table of Contents
Fatigue Management Plan
Fatigue is feeling tired, drained or exhausted. Fatigue influences an individual’s physical and mental and emotional state. When feeling fatigued, reduced alertness, which can lead to poor judgments, slower reactions to events and decreased motor skills. Fatigue can also lead to long-term health problems in some individuals.
Fatigue can result from spending long periods of time awake (such as driving very long distances without sufficient rest breaks/sleep or working extended shifts without adequate rest breaks), or from physically and mentally demanding work tasks.
Scope: The Fatigue Management Plan (FMP) includes the related policy, procedure and supporting processes such as the development and implementation of fatigue risk assessments.
Fatigue Management Policy
Objective: To identify and reduce risks of fatigue and to provide adequate resourcing to prevent fatalities, injury or illness caused by fatigue.
Scope: All workers at the workplace, including contractors and workers of contractors, must be involved in implementing the FMP and follow as required.
Policy: A2Z Services is committed to protecting the health, safety and welfare of our workers. We believe that fatigue can cause the potential for fatalities or severe injuries to workers (including contractors and workers of contractors), visitors or members of the public and as such, are committed to the effective management of fatigue risks.
A2Z Services will:
- Develop and implement a documented Fatigue Management Plan (FMP) in the following situations:
- Overnight shifts;
- Where there is potential for extended shifts;
- Where cumulative work hours exceed shifts 48 hours in a consecutive 5-day period (including unplanned, on-call or emergency work);
- Where workers do not have a minimum of 2 consecutive days off in in any 7-day period;
- A FMP will be developed in consultation with relevant workers and include the following:
- Allocation of responsible persons;
- Allocation of resources (including financial and personnel) to implement the FMP;
- Identify risk factors for fatigue. Including:
- Mental/physical demands of work;
- Work schedules and planning;
- Environmental factors;
- Commute times;
- Work/home life balance/constraints;
- Existing health conditions that may contribute to fatigue;
- Assessment of risk;
- Development and implementation of suitable controls;
- Training for all relevant individuals in the use of controls;
- Review and audit of controls;
- Review the FMP every six months, or if an incident or near miss occurs concerning fatigue.
Fatigue Management Procedure
Responsibilities:
At A2Z Services the PCBU is responsible for ensuring that:
- The health and safety of workers and visitors to the workplace regarding fatigue;
- A FMP is in place;
- Consultation with workers exposed to fatigue-related risks;
- Identification and assessment of hazards arising from worker fatigue;
- Fatigue-related risks are controlled;
- Information and instruction on managing fatigue risks is provided;
- Supervision of work practices to reduce worker fatigue is provided.
Workers and others are responsible for:
- Cooperating with A2Z Services FMP Consulting with relevant managers and supervisors concerning fatigue management;
- Reporting any hazards and risks relating to fatigue;
- Participating in fatigue risk management activities;
- Ensuring that their behaviour does not create or increase fatigue risks, and doing their best to remain fit for work.
Procedure:
Risk Assessment:One fundamental way A2Z Services manages the risks related to fatigue is by conducting a risk assessment. A risk assessment looks carefully at the hazards associated with fatigue, assesses the resulting risk levels and determines how to eliminate or reduce and control those risks.
A risk assessment will involve:
- Input from workers via consultation;
- Review of incidents to determine if fatigue has been a contributing risk factor;
- Use of relevant resources and information (e.g. industry guides, COP, guides produced by regulatory bodies);
- Documenting the risk assessment.
Risk Factors may include:
- Harsh and/or uncomfortable working conditions – e.g. heat, cold, noise and vibration can increase fatigue levels;
- Work environment, working alone or in groups;
- Repetitive or monotonous work;
- Sustained physical or mental effort;
- Complex physical or mental tasks;
- Individual worker traits; young workers, workers returning from injuries, inexperienced workers;
- Work schedules;
- Non-work factors – family commitments, second jobs, lifestyle.
Work practice indications of fatigue include:
- Increased errors and loss of concentration at work;
- Inconsistent work method; this is especially dangerous when operating plant or machinery;
- Increased incident rates;
- Increased injury rates;
- Increased absence rates.
Risk Management:
Prepare work schedules considering the following:
- Hazards, risks and controls, as determined by a risk assessment;
- Previous work hours/required break-away times;
- Times needed to perform tasks safely;
- Legislative requirements for maximum work hours;
- Sufficient rest breaks, including personal activities such as washing, eating meals and travelling to/from work;
- Shift work (especially rotating shifts);
- Reduce night shift work where possible;
- Limiting the amount of allowable over-time, shift swapping and on-call duties as required to reduce fatigue.
Utilise control measures as required to reduce risks of fatigue in the workplace. Examples may be:
- Provide training to allow multi-skilling and opportunities for job rotation;
- Use alarms, buddy system or monitoring for isolated/remote workers;
- Eliminating or reducing and controlling identified fatigue risk factors whenever possible;
- Rotating workers and/or limiting the amount of time per shift the individual workers spend on physically and/or mentally sustained and demanding jobs;
- Monitoring the work environment and designing adequate controls for environmental and workplace conditions (e.g. not working in extreme weather conditions, or starting/finishing early during hot weather);
- Allocate a sufficient amount of time, number of workers and resources to jobs;
- Ensuring there is a system available for supervisors to re-schedule jobs/tasks if fatigue becomes a problem;
- Maintaining adequate consultation and communication with workers regarding fatigue;
- Allowing for essential family commitments and unexpected additional carer duties for workers;
- Providing information and education to workers regarding non-work related fatigue risk factors;
- Encourage workers to report non-work related fatigue risk factors to their supervisor/PCBU.
Training: Training and education must include coverage of issues such as:
- An explanation of what fatigue is and how it affects us;
- The physical, psychological and practical signs of fatigue;
- Possible causes and effects of fatigue;
- Risks involved with working while fatigued;
- Use of the FMP;
- How to conduct risk assessments.
Forms and Registers
| Document Number | Document Name |
| OF0005 | Risk Assessment Form |
| OR0017 | Risk Register |
Amendment Record
Issue#: 1 Issue Date: 13/7/2022
| Rev# | Date | Section# | Para.# | Description of Change | Prepared By | Approved By |
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | ||||||
| 3 |
Click here to download OM00045 – Fatigue Management Policy in PDF Format
Disclaimer: This documentcontains material to assist in meeting environmental management, Work Health and Safety and Quality obligations under the International Standard ISO AS/NZS ISO 9001:2016,14001:2016 and other legislative bodies. This document contains material sourced from Safe Work Australia. Any such material remains subject to copyright © Commonwealth of Australia. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/copyright. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this information at the time of publication, it is provided as guidance only and does not provide legal advice on meeting your obligations. This document and its contents are © A2Z services 2018 and or the originating source authors and no permission is given for its duplication or copying, in part or in its entirety, for use outside its original purposes as stated within the company.