BSBCOM501B: TLI50410 Diploma of Logistics - Fatigue HSEC Management Assessment Answers

Fatigue Management Assignment Help

PURPOSE

The purpose of this Procedure is to assist in the assessment of the causes of fatigue and mitigate the related hazards for BHP Billiton Petroleum Personnel.

Risk Assessment

A fatigue risk assessment must identify the impact of fatigue risks, taking into account relevant local regulations. Fatigue risks must be assessed as Tolerable, Intermediate, or Intolerable.

Tolerable – Controls in place are adequate to mitigate the risks and do not need active management.

Intermediate – Controls require active management while tasks are being

performed.

Intolerable – Must be addressed with additional controls and reassessed.

Fatigue management

Fatigue is defined as the state of physical or mental exhaustion that reduces the ability of a person to work effectively. It makes an individual tired and drowsy due to prolonged physical or mental activity as well as the disruption of the body lock such as lack of sleep. It can thus be caused by work related or non-work related factors or a combination of the two over time. Fatigue management is thus the process of increasing the time for body rest after a long time physical or mental activity. It is a responsibility that must be shared between the workers and the person controlling the work as it involves factors occurring in and outside the workplace (Steege et al., 2015).

Fatigue management is vital as it can affect the ability of an individual to function properly, leading to decreased productivity as well as increased injuries due to possible errors according to Steege et al. (2015). The effects of fatigue can be short-term or long-term and when not managed can lead to health complications such as depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, and lower fertility among other complications. Fatigue management is thus necessary to manage such health risks and conditions that can arise in an individual due to fatigue in the body.

Compliance or legislation requirement

According to Vries et al. (2015), there are different legislative requirements that fatigue management needs to comply with for proper. A proper management plan should have;

1. Time for rest, eating, and rehydration in the process of duty
2. Proper working schedule
3. A sufficient working environment that is well equipped with the relevant and effective machinery and equipment for duty
4. Roster and shift schedules

Responsibility and accountability

In a workplace or outside the workplace, every individual has the safety and health responsibility to ensure that they do not experience the risk of fatigue. It is because fatigue can occur from all duties that someone does when awake (Cowan et al., 2015). The following responsibilities should be undertaken by the respective individuals to ensure fatigue is safely managed;

• Leaders or managers in a workplace

The management has the primary duty of ensuring that workers and other people within the workplace are not exposed to safety and health risks arising from the activities in the workplace. They should thus ensure the provision and maintenance of a healthy and risk free environment that is well equipped with good working systems. They should as well monitor the health or the employees or workers so as to prevent illness or even the injury of workers in the process of duty. In case of a need for the employees to work overtime, the management should ensure it adopts risk management so as to strategies on how to combat fatigue. The directors, managers, and leaders of the organization should ensure they exercise diligence to ensure all the activities in the workplace are in compliance with risk management strategies to help in reducing the health risks of fatigue.

• Workers

Every worker should take reasonable care for their safety and health so as to avoid affecting the health and safety of other fellow workers. As a result, they are expected to comply with all reasonable instructions and policies as well as workplace procedures related to fatigue. In the case of working for extra hours, they should let the management know in case they are fatigued so that they can be given time to rest.

Communication and liaison

The management or leadership of an organization or a workplace is charged with the responsibility of liaising with auditors and external regulators. It will thus ensure that the organization is updated on the compliance related matters so as to help in the fatigue management as well as other work related risks that can be experienced by workers in such environments (Schofield & Callum, 2014). The process of communicating the compliance procures both internally and externally will involve the engagement of the most appropriate form of communication. For instance, the following communication plan will be adopted;

Procedure of reporting compliance

According to Hammer et al. (2016), the procedure for reporting involves;

• The provision of a systematic reporting process that also involves recording and investigation of the compliance breaches so as to enable proactive future inventions.
• Encourage pro-activeness among staff members to report issues of concern to prevent escalation
• Enable information gathering, facilitation, and monitoring of the compliance performance of the relevant authority
• Ensure no staff is disadvantaged or penalized due to reporting compliance breach and that repercussion are undertaken on a case-to-case basis.

Training and Induction

The induction and training of the staff will equip the employees with values such as integrity, openness, respect, and responsibility. It will be aimed at improving their awareness of ethical and regulatory responsibilities while fostering the effectiveness of health and safety fatigue management strategies. The employees will thus understand compliance with the strategies will be beneficial not only to them but to the organization as well. The employees will be trained regularly after every six months through seminars and training programs conducted by invited specialists in the relevant areas of fatigue management. The employees will be trained on;

• Implementation, monitoring, and recognizing breaches of fatigue management plans, policies, regulations, and procedures.
• Competence of the relevant regulations concerning fatigue in a working environment (Regulatory and licensing information).
• Importance of work, shift-work and rosters, as well as job demands and environmental work schedules.

Monitoring, evaluation of compliance

The monitoring and evaluation process of the compliance performance in an organization involves three major stages as adopted from Hammer et al. (2016).

The continuous review of the procedures below will be adopted to ensure the continuous evaluation and monitoring process;

• The identification, assessment, and control of the risk factors that requires compliance. It is the monitoring and evaluation process that requires the involvement of workers so as to identify the fatigue management and compliance factors. It is from this point that the functionality of the adopted control measures can be reviewed so as to ensure they are working as required.
• An adaptation of the compliance process will involve designing and planning work schedules, decision-making on the proposed changes to be adopted, the provision of information and training of the workers, as well as the assessment of an incident where fatigue was a factor.
• The assessment process will which, how, and when the workers are likely of being fatigued, how often is the occurrence, the degree of harm, effectiveness of the adopted control measures, action to control, and urgency of the suggested action in the case of occurrence of fatigue.