Is your shift roster ‘healthy’ for your employees?
What is the physical stress of a shift roster for your employees? How regular and predictable are your shift rosters? Do employees get a whole weekend off now and again? These are just some of the issues that have an impact on the health level of a shift roster.
Measure health with the Roster Risk Profile Analysis (RRPA)
Every employee experiences a certain amount of physical and social stress because of their work times. The effects of physical stress, unlike the social effects, only usually become visible over a long period. The physical and social stress of a work roster, however, will often depend on how it is experienced subjectively by each employee. Luckily Déhora has developed an objective way of assessing work rosters: the Roster Risk Profile Analysis (RRPA). The RRPA analyses work rosters based on nine ergonomic and medical criteria. The main advantage of the RRPA is that in principle it can be applied for all types of work rosters. The scores generated by the RRPA are based on scientific research into the link between shift rosters and occupational health conditions.
How the Roster Risk Profile Analysis works
The RRPA calculates a score for each of the nine criteria from 0% to 100%, whereby 100% is the best score. The higher the score, the lower the risk, The red, orange and green colour-coding for the RRPA scores (the ‘traffic light model’) make it easy to see at a glance what the scores are:
- scores below 60% (red) means there is a significant risk;
- scores between 60% and 75% (orange) mean there is an indirect risk, because a medical condition could evolve over a long period;
- a score of 75% or over (green) means there is no risk for that particular criterion.
Advantages of a healthy shift roster
A healthy shift roster reduces the risk of undercapacity, ensures compliance with statutory regulations, and means employees are healthier, both mentally and physically, and therefore more productive.