Free Essay Example: Fatigue and Worker Safety

Safety and health have been a pressing issue for the labour industry. Many types of research have sought to ensure worker safety and health. At the same time, there have been several regulations put in place by labour organizations to ensure the safety of workers is guaranteed during working hours. Additionally, several issues have been addressed. However, the problem of safety and health in workplaces has not been addressed adequately. There still exist problems that cause unsafe conditions for workers. Fatigue has been an issue that has proven difficult to resolve. Fatigue and safety have remained an issue. This paper seeks to address how fatigue slows down work performance and poses risks to workers' safety since fatigued workers are at high risk of workplace accidents.

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Fatigue affects a person's brain functioning, causing slow performance and lack of concentration. This topic is crucial since the 24-hour economy opened up the market for more work. Most of the working population struggle to make ends meet, and any extra dollar they earn is a success for them. This caused many people to put more their energy to work without rest. Many people work on double shifts or more than two jobs and end up sleeping less. At the same time, fatigue is caused by environmental issues, high workload or even stress. Whenever fatigue persists, it affects judgment and slows down cognitive functioning leading to high risks of job accidents.

The article focuses on how fatigue has contributed to workplace accidents. The author also addresses the factors that cause fatigue. The author gives his accounts according to previous researches on the topic. Fatigue is caused by lack of sleep, high workloads, long working hours and poor working conditions. The article also gives the effects of fatigue on workers; they include low performance, forgetting, low concentration and making errors. The author of the article says that fatigued workers cause many accidents in workplaces. The paper also shares ideas on the solutions to solve fatigue in workplaces. It analyses some solutions that need to be addressed by both the workers and supervisors. One of the major solutions is to get enough sleep and ensure good working conditions for workers. Finally, the management should regulate working hours and implement strategies that identify worker fatigue (Trotto, 2017)

Fatigue and work safety is a crucial topic for human resource management. This is because the subject addresses dynamic work capabilities and ensuring workers safety. The subject enlightens human resource management on ways to improve worker productivity and safeguard them from job accidents. The role of human resource management is to ensure high labour productivity, and fatigue limits the objective of productivity (Wallace and Vodanovich, 2003). The topic under analysis will address worker safety issues and reduce workplace accidents hence minimizing extra costs for the management.

My personal opinion on the topic is that human resource management should always put up regulations that ensure labour safety. These measures should not compromise workers health. At the same time, I feel that lawmakers should put more effort on the issue of fatigue and work safety. They should put up more regulations to reduce working hours and ensure adequate resting by sensitising the workers on the importance of rest. This will minimize workplace accidents for workers and increase the efficiency of employees.

As discussed above the topic of fatigue and workers safety is a sensitive issue that all stakeholders in the labour force should address. More discussions need to be done on the subject to address safety issues. In conclusion, more research is done on the topic and more regulations put in place to ensure the safety and health of workers is guaranteed.

References

Sara Trotto, (February 19, 2017). Fatigue and worker safety. Safety and health magazine retrieved from https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/15271-fatigue-and-worker-safety on 18/11/2018

Wallace, J. C., & Vodanovich, S. J. (2003). Workplace safety performance: Conscientiousness, cognitive failure, and their interaction. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 8(4), 316.