Keeping workers alert and workplaces safe

The Alertness CRC has conquered many challenges of staying alert in a busy world, enabling both employers and employees to keep themselves and their workplaces safe.

Shift work and irregular rostered hours can significantly impact worker health, safety and productivity. Research shows that by avoiding fatigue, mistakes and nonconformances can be reduced by up to 30 per cent.

In partnership with Australian SME Opturion Pty Ltd, an optimisation software company, the Alertness CRC helped to create the world’s first software program that automatically applies fatigue rules to create better staff rosters.

AlertSafe® Rostering is a cloudbased integrated scheduling system that encompasses a complex algorithm, offering sophisticated fatigue management in roster building, roster management, human capital management, and time and attendance systems. The tool considers employees’ constraints and preferences in building optimal rosters to limit and mitigate worker fatigue. Other benefits include increased productivity and a reduction in sickness absence.

Initial results from a trial with the Monash Medical Centre in Victoria demonstrated that this rostering solution has the capacity to deliver improvements to health, safety and productivity in the workplace.

Light can also impact worker performance, through affecting our sleep-wake cycles and internal body clocks. High dosages of electric light at night can be very confusing for the body clock and can lead to disrupted sleep that, over time, affects people’s health and mood– which is partly why many longterm shift workers experience health issues.

Alertness CRC research has shown that it is not the brightness of this artificial light that can most impact our internal clocks; it’s actually the amount of blue light in a light source. 

From these findings, the CRC in collaboration with Australian SME Versalux Lighting Systems and Monash University developed MelaGen™ – LEDs that can be programmed to vary blue light content across any single building environment. This dynamic approach regulates visual and non-visual light to maximise wellbeing. 

MelaGen™ is fast gaining recognition by hospitals, prisons and aged care facilities, among other shift-working institutions – not just for its ability to assist in resetting circadian rhythms and promote good quality sleep, but also for its role in enhancing vision and improving health, safety, performance and wellbeing in the workplace.

Developed as a joint initiative between the Alertness CRC and the Sleep Health Foundation in 2017, the WorkAlert® website continues through the SHF to provide science-driven advice and knowledge around these topics and more, to help conquer the challenges of staying safe and alert at work: https://www.workalert.org.au/.