by Brian McKay
While we all know how to keep things ship shape between the hours of 9 and 5, what happens when you leave the office? Does it all collapse, and your seemingly happy employees feel bound by pressure and frustration? If you have staff that works during the evenings, or overnight, are you doing enough to make sure that they feel secure in the building, but are also able to complete the unique tasks of working overnight?
Addressing The Security
It depends on the job itself, if you have workers that are non-stop throughout the night, you need to ensure that they are 100% focused on the task at hand. If you have an office in the middle of a city center, or in an area that doesn't seem particularly safe after nightfall, you need to ensure that the premises and the staff are looked after. You can do this by hiring a professional security company, but also making sure that your workers have knowledge of what to do in an emergency scenario. There is nothing worse than having one or two workers on premises where it's just them, because anything could happen.
Support Your Workers To Look After Their Health
Some people take to it like a duck to water, others struggle. Ensure that your workers are in tune with their health, especially as the effects of night shift working have been widely publicized. Maybe you could alter the working setup? For example, they work 4 nights in a row, then take 4 days off, and do this on a rotational basis, just so they are able to get away from the work environment. It is about hiring the right person for the role when it comes to night shifts because some people believe that they can cope with the rigors, when in fact, they buckle under the pressure a few weeks in.
Conduct Continual Risk Assessments
It's vital to protect your business, but it's even more imperative that the environment is secure enough during the evenings and the night. Risk assessments are an essential component of any business, but if you are running a small business where everybody's capabilities are stretched to the limit, you may find that you don't have time to conduct them. It's your responsibility to do this as regularly as possible, not just by doing a box-ticking exercise, but actually speaking to the people doing this job. People that work night shifts can feel separate to the rest of the workforce, and so loneliness can creep in. This is why you need to find the right person for the job but also check in with them to see if they are still feeling up to the task.
As you run a business during office hours, it can be easy for you to switch off when your night shift workers clock on. In many ways, the night shift worker is the unsung hero of the business, because not only are they completing the mundane and essential tasks to keep the business ticking over, but they've got a lot more internal battles to contend with, such as feeling tired!
