Assessment of Shift Work and Its Health Related Behaviors Among Employees of Petrochemical Company, Saudi Arabia, 2021 (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Shift work has been reported to lead to adverse health effects and is receiving increased attention. OBJECTIVE The study aimed to understand the relationship between shift work schedules and health behaviours among day-shift workers and rotating day-evening-shift workers and to detect the difference between day-shift work or fixed day-shift and rotating day-evening-shift employees. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted among employees of Petrochemical Company during 2021. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. It consisted of two parts demographic data and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). RESULTS Out of 126 employees, 58 (46.0%) were from group age 41-50 years, 55 (43.7%) were overweight and 41 (32.5%) were obese, 38 (30.2%) were smokers, 99 (78.6%) worked in fixed shift. Two thirds 94 (74.6%) reported 6-8 sleeping hours per day, where 41 (32.5%) reported that they were satisfactory about overall quality of sleep and 40 (31.7%) were somewhat unsatisfactory, 62 (49.2%) reported “playing regular moderate to vigorous exercise”. There was no significant relation between shifts type and general health status (p =0.122). There was a significant association between shift types and the following ; age, BMI, education, nationality, household income, Working experience, Chronic diseases, Frequency of shift work, and Overall amount of sleep per day (p<0.0001, p0.017, p=0.027, p<0.0001, p0.042, p=0.002, p=0.024, p<0.0001, and p=0.044). CONCLUSIONS In the current study, rotating shifts were associated with extra sleeping hours, normal weight and having exercise. There was no significant differences in general health between workers in different shift schedules. Further studies need to be conducted to gather more information in order to decrease the additional health burden allied to non-standard work-schedules.

Disturbance of the Circadian System in Shift Work and Its Health Impact

The various non-standard schedules required of shift workers force abrupt changes in the timing of sleep and light-dark exposure. These changes result in disturbances of the endogenous circadian system and its misalignment with the environment. Simulated night-shift experiments and field-based studies with shift workers both indicate that the circadian system is resistant to adaptation from a day- to a night-oriented schedule, as determined by a lack of substantial phase shifts over multiple days in centrally controlled rhythms, such as those of melatonin and cortisol. There is evidence that disruption of the circadian system caused by night-shift work results not only in a misalignment between the circadian system and the external light-dark cycle, but also in a state of internal desynchronization between various levels of the circadian system. This is the case between rhythms controlled by the central circadian pacemaker and clock genes expression in tissues such as peripheral blood mononuclear cells, hair follicle cells, and oral mucosa cells. The disruptive effects of atypical work schedules extend beyond the expression profile of canonical circadian clock genes and affects other transcripts of the human genome. In general, after several days of living at night, most rhythmic transcripts in the human genome remain adjusted to a day-oriented schedule, with dampened group amplitudes. In contrast to circadian clock genes and rhythmic transcripts, metabolomics studies revealed that most metabolites shift by several hours when working nights, thus leading to their misalignment with the circadian system. Altogether, these circadian and sleep-wake disturbances emphasize the all-encompassing impact of night-shift work, and can contribute to the increased risk of various medical conditions. Here, we review the latest scientific evidence regarding the effects of atypical work schedules on the circadian system, sleep and alertness of shift-working populations, and discuss their potential clinical impacts.

Who Works When? The Case of South Korea

Although Korea’s long working hours are well-known, the work schedules of individuals with different socioeconomic characteristics have not been studied. This paper examines the timing of paid work and socioeconomic characteristics associated with work schedules in Korea. Using data from the Korean Time Use Survey (KTUS) 2014 and based on the analysis of employed people aged from 19 to 64, we found that a higher proportion of men work every hour of the day as compared to women. Women tend to start work late in the day, but a similar proportion of women and men work in the afternoon and evening. About 5 % work during non-standard hours, such as in the evening, at night, and in the early morning, and this percentage increases on the weekends. As in previous literature, divorced men and women or single women tend to work more during non-standard hours during weekdays and weekends. Both occupation and employment status are related to working non-standard hours, showing that women in service sectors and working as an unpaid employee at the family business, and men working in manual labor are more likely than people in other occupations to work during non-standard hours or weekends.

Making Use of Your LMS for Student Staff Training & Support

Training and supporting student staff is a reiterative process that can run into several roadblocks that differ greatly from regular staff training and support - including creating work schedules around class schedules, training student staff individually and comprehensively while making sure student staff really understand processes, and making it easy to communicate (especially for switching shifts). This session covered some reasons why creating a student staff module inside your institution's learning management system (LMS) is a good idea and showed various ways Yale Divinity Library is using Canvas to connect to student staff, taking attendees on a “tour” of the LMS course itself.

Improving health and economic security by reducing work schedule uncertainty

Work schedules in the service sector are routinely unstable and unpredictable, and this unpredictability may have harmful effects on health and economic insecurity. However, because schedule unpredictability often coincides with low wages and other dimensions of poor job quality, the causal effects of unpredictable work schedules are uncertain. Seattle’s Secure Scheduling ordinance, enacted in 2017, mandated greater schedule predictability, providing an opportunity to examine the causal relationship between work scheduling and worker health and economic security. We draw on pre- and postintervention survey data from workers in Seattle and comparison cities to estimate the impacts of this law using a difference-in-differences approach. We find that the law had positive impacts on workers’ schedule predictability and stability and led to increases in workers’ subjective well-being, sleep quality, and economic security. Using the Seattle law as an instrumental variable, we also estimate causal effects of schedule predictability on well-being outcomes. We show that uncertainty about work time has a substantial effect on workers’ well-being, particularly their sleep quality and economic security.

Dampak Pandemi Covid-19 pada Operasional Hotel di The Atrium Hotel and Resort Yogyakarta

The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hotel operation at The Atrium Hotel and Resort Yogyakarta. This study is using a descriptive qualitative approach. The results of the study indicate operational constraints faced by The Atrium Hotel and Resort during the COVID-19 pandemic, which include a longer check-in process, increased operational cost, food and beverage services are not optimal, difficulties in determining the selling price of rooms, difficulty finding guests, and difficulty arranging the employee work schedules. The effort to adjust The Atrium Hotel and Resort Yogyakarta’s operation amid the COVID-19 pandemic are modifying of standard operating procedure (SOP), selling room only, adding facilities to prevent the spread of COVID-19, strict monitoring of health protocols, and MICE activities requiring permission from the COVID-19 force

Parents' Nonstandard Work Schedules and Adolescent Social and Emotional Wellbeing

Increasing evidence shows that parents’ work schedules in evenings/nights have a negative impact on children's physical and mental health. Few studies examine adolescents and joint parental work schedules. We investigate the association between joint parental work schedules and adolescent mental health and test parental time spent with adolescents and parenting style as potential mediators. We analysed one wave of the Raine Study data, focusing on adolescents who were followed up at ages 16-17 and lived in dual-earner households (N=607). Adolescent mental health is measured in the Child Behavioural Checklist (morbidity, internalising behaviour, externalising behaviour, anxiety/depression). Parental work schedules were defined as: both parents work standard daytime schedules (reference), both parents work evening/night/irregular shifts, fathers work evening/night/irregular shifts - mother daytime schedule, mothers work evening/night/irregular shifts - father daytime schedule. Compared to the reference group, when one or both parents worked evening/night/irregular schedules, there was a significant increase in total morbidity, externalising behaviour and anxiety/depression in adolescents. Fathers' evening/night/irregular schedule was associated with a significant increase in total morbidity and externalising behaviour. Inconsistent parenting partially mediated this association. Mothers' evening/night/irregular schedule was not associated with adolescent CBCL scores. Our findings underscore the importance of fathers' work-family balance for adolescent mental health.