Shift work risk assessment
A tailored 360-degree review of your shift work practices
Data-led shift work risk assessment covering shift patterns, shift work management and shift worker support
Support shift worker health and wellbeing
Strengthen operational performance
Support organisational strategy
Our experience
Shift work risk assessment
How shift work is planned and managed poses a distinct set of risks to both shift workers and the organisations that employ them.
Inadequate shift patterns and shift work arrangements could be:
– Jeopardising the safety, health and wellbeing of your employees
– Impacting operational performance
– Creating strategic challenges around compliance, reputation, recruitment and retention
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 states that employers have a legal duty to protect employees from any hazard that poses a risk to health and wellbeing.
Shift work comes within the scope of this legislation as an employer is in control of the shift patterns, management systems and working environment that can lead to negative outcomes.
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 means employers must assess their approach, identify any risks and introduce measures that are reasonably practicable to remove or control them.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift will:
1. Analyse all relevant HR and operational factors
2. Create a detailed picture of where potential challenges lie
3. Provide a plan for putting in place mitigating actions and solutions
Our shift work risk assessment blends specialist shift work expertise with data-led diagnostics to quickly surface risk, agree priorities and support practical improvements across:
Demand and capacity planning | Shift patterns | Governance | Management systems | Stakeholder engagement | Shift worker health and wellbeing support
Looking to better mitigate shift work risk?
Book a free, confidential shift work risk health check with one of our experts.
This 30 minute high-level discovery process will help them understand more about your situation.
They’ll quickly identify potential risks and opportunities for you to consider.
Benefits of a shift work risk assessment
The risks posed by shift work are multi-faceted.
It can directly impact your shift workers through potential fatigue-related accidents, disrupted sleep, health impacts and work-life balance conflicts.
Poorly planned and managed shift work also creates operational and strategic challenges that impact performance, compliance and resilience.
Our shift work risk assessment uses specialist knowledge, data and tools to help you identify where these risks lie and start mapping out how to mitigate them quickly and effectively.
Support shift worker health & wellbeing
Shift work can pose a variety of risks when it comes to shift worker health and wellbeing and should be managed like any other potential hazard.
Shift worker fatigue may result in reduced alertness, slower reaction times, increased memory lapses and reduced risk awareness…all of which can increase the likelihood of error and incident risk.
A shift work risk assessment helps you identify aspects of shift work that might be heightening the risk of shift worker fatigue, such as gaps in cover, shift patterns and environmental conditions.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift will help underpin your safe working practices by identifying where and how fatigue risk could be better managed.
There is growing evidence and awareness of the potential influence shift work has on a wide range of health and social issues such as heart disease, cancer, dementia and suicide.
This awareness is driving increased scrutiny of what measures employers are taking to mitigate this risk.
It makes having a proactive, data-led approach in this area a vital component in your overall health and wellbeing strategy.
Our shift work risk assessment will help you understand how your current ways of working could contribute to long-term shift worker health issues and how best to adapt them.
Strengthen operational performance
Alongside employee safety and wellbeing, shift work practices can pose significant risk when it comes to an organisations’ financial position.
Shift patterns that don’t align to demand typically create a dependency on expensive overtime and agency workers.
This can often be a significant overhead that could be dramatically reduced by maximising capacity from the contracted hours of existing employees.
Left unaddressed, unnecessary labour costs can pose a risk to an organisations’ sustainability and resilience…with financial pressures threatening job security and undermining growth opportunities.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift will help you identify whether the finances of your organisation are being impacted by unnecessarily high labour costs.
Misaligned shift patterns and poor shift work management practices also risk negatively impacting productivity, efficiency and service delivery.
Gaps in cover, high shift worker absence rates and suboptimal asset utilisation could be impacting your throughput, SLA adherence and impacting your customers and service users.
Challenges can lie in the fundamentals of having the right people in the right place at the right time…but also the compounding effect poor shift work conditions can have on absence rates and morale.
Our shift work risk assessment will explore how processes are being impacted by shift work and identify solutions that enhance operational performance.
Support organisational strategy
In addition to people and performance, shift work is increasingly being viewed as a strategic risk when it comes to governance, reputation and ESG commitments.
Organisations face growing expectations to evidence that shift work risk is understood and controlled, particularly around night work, shift work fatigue and the long-term impacts of shift work.
Many organisations lack a joined-up view of the different aspects of shift work which means responsibility for proactively managing risk and compliance assurance can be ill defined or overlooked.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift will help you benchmark your controls and audit capabilities to ensure you identify any weaknesses that may lead to costly breaches and reputational damage.
Shift work poses a significant risk to industrial relations, employee satisfaction and your employer brand.
Employee relations issues can often be traced back to the impact ways of working have on work-life balance, health and wellbeing and engagement.
Environments with challenging shift working conditions typically experience higher absence, employee relations issues, significant staff turnover and can struggle to attract the necessary calibre and diversity of talent.
Our shift work risk assessment will help you identify whether your shift work practices are helping or hindering recruitment and retention.
How exposed to shift work risk are you?
Schedule a free, confidential shift work risk health check with one of our experts.
This 30‑minute high-level discovery process will help them understand more about your situation.
They’ll quickly identify potential risks and opportunities for you to consider.
Shift work risk assessment - what's covered?
optashift’s shift work risk assessment covers the core underlying drivers of risk in your resourcing model.
It looks across the different aspects of shift work, going beyond compliance and policy hygiene by using advanced data analytics to examine how your approaches are impacting operational, health and safety, employee wellbeing and strategic risk in practice.
Demand and capacity
Misalignment between labour demand and supply is often a primary driver of performance and people risk in shift work environments.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift covers the impact of:
– Variability in demand
– Cover models
– Under and over-staffing trends
– Overtime and agency use
Our experts will help you identify whether your shift work resourcing models are creating avoidable capacity challenges and qualify the risk this may pose to your performance and people.
Shift patterns
Shift patterns that are a poor fit for your operations and shift workers will have hugely detrimental impacts.
As part of a shift work risk assessment our experts will explore the impact of:
– Alignment to best practice and benchmarks (e.g. rotations, rest, shift premia)
– Flexibility and ability to manage labour supply and demand variations
– Fatigue risk created by shift patterns
– Balance, equity and fit with workforce demographics
We’ll help you identify whether your shift patterns are fit for purpose or creating risk that will concern your Operations, HR, Health and Safety and Finance teams.
Shift work governance
Weak governance around shift work creates risk as it allows non-standardised practices to become embedded which can be hard to control and audit.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift covers the impact of:
– Variance rules and controls
– Decision pathways, accountability and auditability
– Policy hygiene and oversight responsibilities/cadence
– Fatigue integration in incident and near miss investigations
Our experts will help you assess whether your shift work governance is robust enough to stand up to operational pressures or external scrutiny and identify how to address any gaps that pose a risk to your performance and people.
Shift work systems
Shift work risk increases if your rostering and workforce management processes and software are not enforcing shift work rules and best practice on a day-to-day basis.
As part of a shift work risk assessment our experts will explore the impact of:
– Practice/policy alignment
– Workforce management software capabilities
– Manager/supervisor training and skills
– Data quality and reporting frameworks
We’ll help you identify where current systems and processes are undermining your controls and where changes could materially improve compliance, fairness and resilience.
Communications and engagement
The risks posed by shift work are often exacerbated by stakeholder communication and engagement challenges.
It’s not uncommon for shift workers to feel disconnected and management to feel frustrated in shift work environments.
A shift work risk assessment from optashift covers the impact of:
– Channel and message effectiveness (including handovers)
– Workforce and Trade Union collaboration
– Sentiment analysis and feedback loops
– Cultural norms (including self-reporting)
Our experts will help you understand whether communications and engagement are helping surface and manage risk early, or whether gaps in your approach are allowing potential issues to compound.
Shift worker health and wellbeing support
Health and wellbeing programmes and initiatives only help reduce risk if they reflect the reality of shift work in your organisation.
They need to consider a wide range of factors including the hours and rotations people work, the nature of their role and the workplace itself.
As part of a shift work risk assessment our experts will explore the impact of:
– Facility provision and access
– Environmental controls (e.g. lighting, temperature, noise)
– Training and guidance effectiveness
– Escalation & cross stakeholder co-ordination
We’ll help you identify whether your current support for shift workers and other stakeholders is credible and effective, or whether gaps are creating avoidable shift work risk.
Shift work risk assessment delivered by experts
optashift is home to the largest collective of experts in the UK with disciplines spanning all aspects of shift work risk.
This includes Human Factors practitioners specialising in shift work fatigue and former Health and Safety Executive (HSE) senior inspectors.
Over the past three decades our team has delivered shift work risk assessments in highly regulated environments including emergency services, manufacturing, COMAH sites, utilities and transport.
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optashift’s shift work risk assessment fits within our overarching ACE best practice framework.
This unified, data-led and collaborative methodology delivers assessment, transformation and continuous improvement across all aspects of shift work, including shift patterns, shift work management and shift worker health and wellbeing support.
Analyse
Harness data to identify potential shift work risk and shape effective, practical mitigation strategies
Create
Co-design solutions to ensure they address risk whilst balancing the needs of your organisation and employees
Engage
Help reduce risk through effective communications and engagement across your key stakeholders
Shift work risk assessment software
The experts at optashift have created a proprietary suite of tools that help tackle the risks posed by shift work.
They complement our subject matter expertise and will support the delivery of your shift work risk assessment.
This technology-enabled service allows you to benefit from the enhanced visibility, efficiency, and assurance provided by software without the headaches caused by long-term contracts, system integrations, complex configurations or ongoing user support.
There are no extra licences, rentals, or subscription costs…just powerful tools, knowledge and shift work risk assessment expertise.
You can find out more about our technology tools here.
View
Shift work data analytics tools that quickly surface insights and enable granular measurement, monitoring and reporting across all domains
Plan
Unique software that can quickly generate optimised shift patterns and supports interactive employee engagement and co-design
Hub
An accessible two-way platform provides a customisable communications and engagement channel tailored to your stakeholders
Want to know more about shift work risk assessment technology?
Book a free confidential 30‑minute shift work risk health check with one of our experts.
Shift work risk assessment from experienced consultants
Shift work risk assessments need to be handled with the utmost professionalism.
The shift work experts at optashift are some of the most experienced and widely respected specialist consultants in the UK.
We work in partnership with customers, providing agile support that reflects your precise needs…whilst focusing on delivering measurable impact and forging productive stakeholder relationships.
Our experience
How exposed to shift work risk are you?
Book a free, confidential shift work risk health check with one of our experts.
This 30‑minute high-level discovery process will help them understand more about your situation.
They’ll quickly identify potential risks and opportunities for you to consider.
FAQ
Q: What is a shift work risk assessment?
A: A shift work risk assessment is a structured, 360-degree review of how shift work is planned and managed.
It aims to identify the potential risk this creates for both shift workers and the organisation.
It uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to examine what is happening in practice across demand and capacity, shift patterns, governance, systems, communications and engagement and health and wellbeing support.
Q: Why do organisations need a shift work risk assessment rather than a generic risk assessment?
A: Shift work creates distinct performance and people risks that can often sit between the responsibilities of Health and Safety, Operations, HR, Occupational Health and Finance.
This means ownership and visibility can be fragmented. A dedicated shift work risk assessment helps joins the dots.
Q: What risks does a shift work risk assessment help you understand?
A: It focuses on operational risk (productivity, efficiency etc), people risk (fatigue-related incidents, health impacts etc) and strategic risk (compliance, recruitment and retention, ESG etc).
Q: What does your shift work risk assessment cover?
A: To build a holistic picture our shift work risk assessment looks at six key areas of shift work.
These are: demand and capacity planning, shift patterns, governance, systems, stakeholder engagement and health and wellbeing support.
Q: What is the difference between a shift work risk assessment and a night worker health assessment?
A: A shift work risk assessment is focused on an organisation and its systems.
It reviews how shift work practices create or control risk across an operation.
A night worker health assessment is an individual health evaluation that employers must offer for night workers before they start night work and at regular intervals (under the Working Time Regulations).
Q: What outputs do we get from a shift work risk assessment?
A: A detailed report providing a clear qualitative and quantitative analysis of where potential challenges lie along with guidance around priority mitigating actions and suggestions for practical solutions.
Q: Who should be involved internally?
A: A shift work risk assessment should initially involve appropriate stakeholders from Operations, Health and Safety or SHEQ, HR, Occupational Health, Wellbeing / ESG leads, Workforce Planning/Resourcing and Finance.
You may also want to consider the involvement of Trade Unions, employee representatives and the wider workforce during a shift work risk assessment.
Q: Do we need to change shift patterns to reduce risk?
A: Not always. Improvements can come from better use of data, tighter management controls, clearer governance and practical guidance.
Shift pattern change often delivers the most impact, but it should be tested against operational constraints and stakeholder needs.
Q: How often do we need to conduct a shift work risk assessment?
A: Assuming you have already undertaken an assessment and have benchmarks to work with…at a minimum you should conduct a shift work risk assessment when working patterns or conditions change, or when data suggests controls are degrading.
Shift work risk should be managed proactively, using analytics and engagement to identify and address risk within a continuous improvement framework.
The HSE stipulates that organisations should focus on ongoing checks and reviews rather than one-off documentation.
Q: How does the shift work risk health check work?
A: It’s a free confidential 30- minute conversation with an optashift expert to identify likely areas of risk and improvement opportunities.
It will provide high-level clarity on where you may be exposed and what the sensible next move looks like. That might be deeper analysis, targeted fixes or a sustained improvement programme.
Book a free shift work risk health check
Gaining a broad understanding of where risk might sit in your shift work system is a good starting point.
We offer a free confidential 30-minuite shift work risk health check where one of our experts will take you through a high-level discovery process that quickly identifies potential risks and opportunities for improvement.
You can use this insight to start to identify priorities and move towards a more detailed shift work risk assessment.
Use this form to book a shift work risk health check