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FLEET MANAGEMENT
that or are under pressure to get less sleep in order to
get more done, sometimes only managing up to six
hours of sleep, if that, on a regular basis and it affects us.
That’s not right, and if you don’t have adequate sleep
there are consequences. Your vigilance is impaired,
reaction time is increased, your ability to process
diminishes, you become irritable and easily lose focus.”
“Time spent in bed resting is time well spent,” he said.
“One of the problems is that you can have a boss who
is a notoriously short sleeper and influences their team
by spreading the attitude that because they don’t need
sleep, their people don’t and that’s wrong. We need
to recognise how important sleep is. Something like
30-40% of adults say they don’t get enough sleep on a
regular nightly basis and I believe the huge information
overload has come from social media. We never switch
off, but we need to and we need to have sympathy for
others’ basic human needs for sleep.”
One of the people helping mitigate the issue of driver
fatigue in fleet management is Robert Wilson from 4C
Management Solutions. He’s a kind of GP for operating
a business’ fleet, an expert at spotting leaks in the hull
and offering tools and strategies for solving problems.
GOVLINK » ISSUE 3 2016
“Fatigue is an impairment that is manifested by
on-going factors, it’s not something transient,” he
explains. “Fatigue has an important relationship to
fleet management. It’s not always about driving either,
it relates to plant and equipment operation and other
functions in the increasingly motorised workplace.”
Rob, giving numerous examples of how fatigue can
seep into the work environment undetected is quite
confronting, some cases easily mistaken for shallow
assumptions.
“That impairment has potential to impact through
injury or via productivity and quality of outcomes.
Supervisors, managers and heads of department need
to have an awareness of this notion of fatigue. You
might say to your colleagues, ‘Look at this slacker,
dragging his heels, not performing where I expect them
to.’ This could be a telltale sign the issue is present.”
According to his experience, Rob sees this becoming
more widely recognised in the workforce. Some
specialist organisations look at this sort of detail,
providing information sessions, offering educational
material to help people understand what fatigue is,
what it looks like and how the business is tracking, and
then provide solutions.