Welcome to STOPThink!

Welcome to this month’s edition of STOPThink!

It is nice to have the winter months behind us and to experience the lighter evenings with the summer months to look forward to. As part of this month’s introduction, I want to touch on the relevance and importance of fatigue management and stress awareness.

Fatigue management is an important aspect of health and safety management and a risk that is relevant to us all. Fatigue can impair concentration, reaction times, and decision-making. Therefore, it is a risk that can impact our ability to correctly and safely perform everyday tasks, including driving, operating machinery, working on the railway or roads, working with electrical equipment and performing manual handling tasks. When fatigue is not identified and managed effectively, it increases the likelihood of errors, near misses, and potentially serious incidents.

Fatigue is not always immediately visible and can creep up on us. Signs of fatigue include reduced alertness, slowed reaction times, impaired cognitive function, irritability, forgetfulness, and poor decision-making. It is also important to recognise the strong connection between fatigue and stress. Ongoing fatigue can make it harder to cope with everyday demands resulting in increased stress levels. Conversely, high stress, especially from long hours, tight deadlines, or demanding environments can lead to mental and physical exhaustion, even when we do not experience obvious physical exertion.

Effectively managing fatigue is very relevant to the work we undertake as a business and I want to highlight the need to prioritise rest, recognising the warning signs, and planning work with fatigue and stress in mind.

You can find resources to help you manage fatigue and stress within the health and wellbeing section of the website. I hope that you enjoy this month’s STOPThink!

Louis Nel, Managing Director of Navitas Engineering Group