Productivity on a weekly rotating shift system: circadian adjustment and sleep deprivation effects?

Abstract

There is little doubt that productivity and safety can be impaired on the night shift. Two main factors have been identified that may be responsible for this. On the one hand, the circadian rhythm in performance on at least simple tasks is at a low ebb at night, and adjusts only slowly over a span of night shifts. On the other, the day sleeps of shift workers taken between night shifts are of a reduced duration, and thus a cumulative sleep debt may accrue over successive night shifts. The former thus predicts that productivity should improve over a span of night duty, while the latter predicts that it should decline. We have examined the productivity of 53 female shift workers, and the sleeping habits of a sub-sample of 30 of them, on a weekly rotating shift system in order to assess the relative contribution of these two factors. Our results suggest that circadian adjustment to night work is the dominant factor for the first three or four successive nights shifts, but that sleep deprivation effects may then result in a decrease in productivity over subsequent nights. They also indicate that sleep deprivation, but not circadian adjustment, may affect the productivity of some workers when on the morning shift.

Sensing Interruptibility in the Office

“…Previous research has already linked both, computer interaction and biometric sensors to mental load and interruptibility [28, 45,80,37,63,20]. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to compare these types of sensors in the field over a longer period of time.…”

“…Based on prior research as well as invasiveness, we chose to use two biometric sensors for our field study: the Polar H7 for recording HR and HRV data, which both have been linked to stress and cognitive load by previous research [1,28], and the Fitbit Charge 2 for recording HR (sampled every 10s), physical activity (sampled every 1min), and sleep (duration and quality metrics), which have been linked to interruptibility [30,18,45] and productivity [68,80].…”

“…when walking to another location [30,18,45]. A further and not yet fully studied factor of interruptibility is sleep, which has been shown to have a big impact on productivity and mood [68,80,49].…”

Shift Work and Labor Productivity in Urban Sewer Construction

“…The literature generally noted that both safety and productivity may be compromised in night shifts (Vidacek et al 1986;Folkard and Tucker 2003). Nighttime operations were more hazardous than daytime operations (Arditi et al 2007).…”

Napping on night shift: Powerful tool or hazard?

“…As well as compromising safety, it is estimated that industrial productivity declines approximately 5% at night, as compared with day work (17). In addition to a decline in productivity, accidents and injuries are 30% more likely to occur on night shifts than day shifts (18).…”