A quick coaching program can show supervisors how often they unnecessarily interrupt their staff, to the detriment of staff members' health, and help them "redesign" working arrangements, according to Swiss researchers.
Eating badly can be as bad for workers' alertness and safety outcomes as sleep deprivation, according to a leading dietitian who urges employers to "make the healthy choice the easy choice" in workplaces.
Workers will be protected from the health and safety risks associated with "availability creep" and excessive hours through the right to "refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact, or attempted contact, from an employer" outside of working hours, under agreed legislative changes.
Australia has moved a step closer to harmonising the right to disconnect from work, with a parliamentary inquiry recommending the move after hearing workers across multiple sectors are being exhausted and injured "to no good purpose".
Workers with flexible arrangements are far more likely than those with set hours to suffer from insomnia, according to researchers, who suggest more thought needs to go into allocating resources and curtailing demands.
Employers that operate heavy vehicles have been "challenged" to review and overhaul their fatigue management systems, after a company's national operations manager was sentenced to three years' jail for recklessness that led to the deaths of four police officers.
An eight-item questionnaire to detect sleep apnoea in at-risk workers has proved to be an effective and low-cost way to screen a workforce for a condition that poses significant safety and health risks, researchers say.
Managers have been urged to target the factors that exacerbate work stress and lead to sleep disorders, with a 12-year study suggesting this can reduce the risk of "poorer work ability trajectories" among older workers.
A senior company executive has been found guilty of recklessness and faces jail, in the latest case involving the deaths of four police officers in a road incident caused by a drug-affected truck driver.