VANCOUVER, Wash. – The tricks Sabrina Magsam played on her body began the moment she left Southwest Washington Medical Center after finishing her shift in the hospital’s lab.
She donned dark sunglasses to dull the sun’s awakening effect. She draped blankets over the bedroom windows of her Ridgefield home. A fan droned on while she slept, creating white noise to block out the sounds of suburbia.
In the end, the ploys did little to convince Magsam’s body that day was night.
“I felt groggy pretty much all of the time,” she said of the year spent working the midnight shift at a hospital.
Magsam’s experience isn’t unique for the legions of people who toil while the rest of us sleep. But she is part of a growing number of white-collar employees who find themselves working outside the traditional 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift as the global economy creeps closer to a never-ending business cycle.
Brian O’Neill, marketing and communications manager for Circadian Technologies Inc. in Lexington, Mass., said the new face of the shift worker is the New York stock trader who is up by 3 a.m. to work the Tokyo Stock Exchange, or the person answering calls throughout the night at a call center.
“We’re seeing a sweeping increase in more service sector, financial services and information technology jobs,” O’Neill said.
Circadian is a research and consulting firm that helps companies increase performance and safety for employees who work odd shifts. Circadian’s studies have found U.S. businesses lose $206 billion a year from extended-hour schedules.
Circadian found that $80 billion of that lost money comes from a 5 percent drop in productivity and excessive overtime that affects efficiency. Another $50.4 billion is lost because extended-hour employees are more than twice as likely to call in sick.
O’Neill’s company draws its name from the internal clock that regulates human sleep patterns. While a segment of society is easily able to adapt to working odd hours, the difficulties of working a night shift are numerous. Fatigue, depression, eating disorders and lack of exercise are just a few of the obstacles night workers face.
Circadian’s consulting arm teaches companies how to educate employees about the dangers and solutions. It also gives tips about improving lighting and ergonomics to assist employees in staying alert and remaining productive.
Magsam, who recently switched to a swing shift, is a medical technician in the hematology division of Southwest’s lab. When she worked with the midnight crew her shift went from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.
The work was quick paced and solitary as technicians bore through a multitude of tests requested by doctors for emergency room patients and hospitalized patients.
The midnight shift is a love-hate relationship for Larry Knight, owner of Knighthawk Protection, a Vancouver security services business. He oversees administration duties during the day, goes home for a few hours of sleep and hits the streets at night. The schedule is stressful, but one filled with work he loves.
“It makes you think,” he said.
Knight opened the business in February 2001 and said it has grown steadily. He stresses to his 33 employees the need to get sleep, eat right and exercise regularly in order to be alert while patrolling the businesses and apartment complexes that hire the firm.
Jim Slothower, operations manager at Knighthawk, has spent most of the last 20 years working security-related jobs throughout the night. Despite all those years, it’s not a shift he likes, but one that has become routine for him.
The advantages of working at night are becoming a greater lure, particularly for young workers who have the energy, like the higher pay and are gobbling up overtime, O’Neill said.
The challenge for companies is to capitalize on those attitudes while lowering operational costs and avoiding the pitfalls, O’Neill said.
He believes companies are sitting on a gold mine of unrealized revenues if they can better harness the potential of night shift employees.
Associated Press
Jim Slothower, operations manager for Knighthawk Protection in Brush Prairie, patrols a client’s apartment complex at night.
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