How Prospect helped facilitate new fatigue training initiative for energy workers
Prospect health and safety officer Chris Warburton introduces a new project to develop fatigue training and new resources for workers in energy networks – and reveals Prospect’s small role in helping to get the initiative off the ground.
Energy distribution and transmission employers will soon join a project to develop new fatigue training based on the experiences of frontline managers and staff. Over the summer, experts from the University of Hull will hold six focus groups with operational employees to explore the fatigue risks they are exposed to.
Based on the issues that emerge from the focus groups, the University of Hull will develop two sets of resources. The first will be a training package that will help managers and staff understand what causes fatigue and what they can do to address it. The second will be downloadable resources that can be tailored to each company’s needs. The project has been named EFRIN, short for Exploring Fatigue Risks in Networks.
The six focus groups will be grouped by operational context, and will include sessions for SAPs, control room staff and frontline supervisors and managers. There will be two or three members of staff per license area in each group.
The Energy Networks Association (ENA), which is coordinating the project, has agreed that union reps will be invited to each focus group. The companies will soon contact branches seeking volunteers, if they haven’t already.
Fatigue is priority issue for the union. Our 2022 survey of energy sector members found that 38% of respondents had felt too fatigued to work safely in the previous 12 months. This rises to 47% of respondents working in distribution.
Prospect has worked with staff from Hull over the last few years. Academics from the university’s Centre for Human Factors have spoken about fatigue at a number of our events and their research informed our representatives’ guide to fatigue in the energy sector. EFRIN was launched after Prospect introduced Hull to the ENA and arranged for the Centre’s lead, Prof Fiona Earle, to speak at the ENA’s occupational health committee.
Most employers, if they do address fatigue at all, tend to focus solely on working hours and, by extension, the opportunity individuals have for rest and sleep. This is important but not sufficient on its own. This is the approach adopted by the ENA in its fatigue position paper, which acts as good practice guidance to employers in the industry.
Prof Earle and her colleagues have developed a methodology for assessing occupational fatigue risks based on their research which has shown that the causes of fatigue are multifaceted, and include the mental, physical and emotional demands of the work and exposure to extreme environmental conditions, as well as sleep quality, quantity and working hours.
We have had concerns about the fatigue position paper since it was published in 2021. It encourages employers to take an individualised and simplistic approach to fatigue focusing solely on working time to the exclusion of other issues. To compound this, the maximum working day for business as usual activities set out in the position paper is 16 hours – which is clearly excessive.
Nevertheless, we are moving in the right direction on occupational fatigue compared with several years ago. These focus groups are testament to that. But there is further to go. We look forward to the results of the focus groups and are hopeful that the training will push us further in the right direction.
