Enhance Your Team's On-Shift Performance
Shift-work specialist Carolyn Scheer explains why 70% of workers show up tired and what it costs small businesses. Mental fatigue from sustained focus drives most errors and injuries. Simple fixes: let people self-schedule, align hard tasks to their peak energy, and give 10-minute breaks every 3-4 hours.
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Oh, I'm so sorry. It turns out, I am like 69% of the workforce. I am exhausted. But if close to 7 out of 10 of your employees are tired, how the heck can you run your business? And that's coming up next. Welcome back to Marc Haine Live. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them work on their business, not just in their business. I am your host, Service Expert and Master of Experiences Marc Haine. And today, I am so pumped to be speaking with shift work sleep and fatigue specialist, Carolyn Sher. And we'll get to her in just a moment. I just wanted to acknowledge my fantastic subscribers. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for being loyal. You are amazing! And to you watching this episode, if you're not a subscriber, thank you for joining me today. I hope you and your team get extraordinary value from today's content. I always aim to bring you that value. I have a favorite ask though. We are coming up to our 1-year anniversary. This is episode number 44, right? We're only a few episodes away from number 52, 1 year. And when I started this channel, I thought, you know, I'd love to get 1,000 subscribers in 1 year. I thought the first year, how hard could it be, right? How hard? But it's pretty hard. This month, I hit 79 subscribers and reality has set in. I know I've been completely disillusioned. So, if you're not a subscriber, would you help me out? I'd love to get to 100 people. If you are this market, I'd love it if you would go ahead and give me a thumbs up and ring the bell if this is of value to you. And please share it on your social media channels and ask your network to subscribe as well. This way, we get to share the information that I bring you each and every week. So, thanks so much! You know, I have to tell you, I am a morning person. I like nothing more than to get up. And as soon as I get out of bed, I go, go, go, go. And it drives my wife crazy. Absolutely crazy. My guest today is a proclaimed night owl. Like my wife, she bumps up in the afternoon and goes late into the night. So, this brings me to my question of the day. So, are you a morning person or a night owl? How does that affect the people you work with? How do they rate? As a leader, should you be concerned with your staff whether or not they're night owls? As I mentioned, I am so proud to welcome my guest today. She is the author of Keys to Managing Sleep and Fatigue in the Workplace. She's a sought-after speaker and workplace consultant who knows how to help people sleep better. Carolyn Scheer is a shift work sleep and fatigue specialist who has gained a reputation as an expert after 25 years of doing the research, writing, and presenting to audiences and workplaces across the continent. Welcome to the show, Carolyn! It's so nice to have you.
Hello! Nice to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Yeah. So, before we get into it, maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you do for your clients.
Well, I work with organizations that are 24/7 shift work organizations or have shift work even if it's just the extended day. And I help them reduce turnover, reduce I reduce sick time and healthcare costs, reduce injuries, as well as improve performance. And I do it by helping the employees themselves, the shift workers, be more alert and at work. So, I deal with sleepiness and fatigue and how to overcome those so that you are actually alert and at work. Wow!
This is, you know, I think it's such an interesting topic. How did you get involved with this as a specialty?
Well, it's kind of a long story, but it's interesting that you started talking about what I call birds of a different feather, which it appears that we are. Because I was a night owl, I had a hard time fitting into an early bird world, and that caused me to do some research. That was my original research, trying to figure out why I was the way that I was.
Mm-hmm.
And so when I found out the research supporting that, I was working primarily in helping daytime workplaces improve performance based on the fact, as you are saying, that, you know, some people are morning people, some people are night people. And my contention was, how do we make this work in the workplace? How do we take advantage of that? So that we can ensure that performance is there, and we don't have all the other problems that are associated with having birds of a different feather in a workplace. But very quickly, people came to me and said, "Well, what about the people that really are night owls and are working all night long, or working late into the night? You know, how do we help those people?" And at the time, because I've been doing this for such a long time, at the time I had access to the research and the medical libraries, but. The workers in the front lines didn't, and no one was giving them any information or helping them in any way. So everyone was struggling with sleeping and how to sleep and, and what do you— what to do when you're not alert at work and all of that kind of thing. So from that one little request from a 24-hour workplace in 1996, here we are.
Nice. You know, I mentioned the statistics at the very beginning from the National Safety Council that suggests that 69% of the people in the workforce are showing up tired. Does that sound right to you? Is that part of— have you seen that as part of your experience?
Oh, absolutely. Sleep deprivation is just pervasive. And we tend to be somewhat dismissive of it in that we kind of, well, everyone's tired. So like, just Pull up your socks, you know, and get to work. And oh, but yeah, absolutely. People are very tired either because of, you know, the choices they're making. You know, actually one of the interesting things is that there was some interesting research that showed how people use their time. And the biggest factor in leading to sleep deprivation is the daily commute. People spend long, long hours in commutes. Now, maybe less so in COVID times. But yes, so people are being sleep deprived for a number of reasons including sleep disorders. But people are tired, yes.
Yeah, you know, it's so funny when you said pull up their socks. I thought, oh, you know, I remember somebody telling me to pull up my big boy panties and get back to work. But that was 1981.
Yeah. And you still haven't gotten to the big boy part?
Never. I've never reached it. I don't know what it is. But so, Carolynn, in your experience, what problem is this causing business operators?
Well, for businesses, one of the problems is that first of all, you don't get the performance that you need. You were mentioning about being an early bird and getting up in the morning and you're productive and you get your work done. Well, You know, you don't want me at your workplace at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning. I'm, first of all, not very pleasant to be around because I'm still half asleep. I can't, I can't really think very well, so I'm making mistakes and I'm not moving along as quickly as I need to be and all of those kinds of things. So, performance is a big deal when you have people who are not well-rested. But then there's the issue of, you know, I talk about being alert and at work. People just call in and say, I can't come in. One of the most common reasons that people take a me day, a wellness day, is to catch up on sleep. So quite often in shift work workplaces, you find that a shift you're expecting someone to come in, they don't show up. Because, you know, they're tired and now all of a sudden you're scrambling. So, you have those kinds of issues. Conflict is common, you know, because you know that if you're sleepy, you just don't have the patience to, you know, someone says hello to you and you take their head off. So, people that are not well rested are more likely to be ill. So, you have Greater levels of absenteeism, your healthcare costs go up, and of course turnover, especially in a in an extended hours workplace where people can't deal with the rigors of the changing sleep and wake cycles. They just leave. And so yeah, all of those things—the turnover, the performance, the injuries—which are common when people are are not well rested. All of those things cost companies.
Yeah, and I think every small business I've ever talked to has experienced one or many of the symptoms you have just outlined. I'd love to get into some of the assumptions employers make, or in some cases that they don't make about their staff's performance. And we'll get to that right after this.
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Welcome back. We are talking with Fatigue in the workplace with specialist Carolyn Scheer. Carolyn, I know having worked with many business owners that sometimes owners and managers can get really frustrated with their team's performance. And one of the things that you outlined just before we took that quick break was this idea that we build in the assumption that maybe people are lazy. Maybe that they are not motivated. But They don't care about work. Yeah, that, you know, how do they know that that's not the case and really, people are just really tired?
Yeah, and that's something that we need to actually ask an employee. We can't just make this assumption that, you know, that you don't care about work, that you are lazy. So, there's a couple of things to think about. One, you know, I'm glad that you're just suggesting that we actually do need to pay attention, that we can't just dismiss it. So we do need to pay attention and deal with the employee and can't just say, oh, they're lazy, and perhaps fire them. You know, you're losing a bad employee for no reason. So one of the things in hospitality, in small businesses, and even in larger businesses, but where you have shift work, is people are coming to work where it's often And it's often not their first shift of the day. You know, they may be students. They may be parents with other obligations. They may actually have another full-time job. And now they are coming to this job. So, because of all those reasons, they may be sleep deprived. And so, we have to kind of recognize that people do have this life outside of work. the shift at your business. I know that we want to think that, you know, it's my business and everyone should care about this business, but people do have lives. And so we do need to pay attention. What's happening to this person outside of work? And is that having implications here? Because you deal with that differently. One of the things that I see employers do, large and small, is that they resort right away to discipline. And saying, well, you know, you fell asleep at work, you were late at work, you know, you made a mistake, something. And so they, they resort to discipline. And I think that that's wrong. Not that there isn't a place for discipline, but we need to first look at why might this have happened? Is there something that I can do as an employer that would help to support this employee so that I don't lose this employee and then get stuck in this whole thing of having to recruit and hire and train and all of that kind of thing. Because that's a big expense. People don't realize that. People just think, oh, I'll just fire this person. But there is a big expense in terms of time and energy that goes into hiring other people. So if you can hang on to this person, assuming that they're You know, doing a good job. And just think about, one of the mistakes that people make also is that we have an assumption that if someone makes a mistake or has an injury or something, it's because they were not trained well. And that's a false assumption as well, because people who are, as we said at the beginning, too tired to care. When we are sleepy and when we are fatigued, we become complacent. And we make mistakes even though we do something that we know that is not the correct thing to do. Actually, injuries and accidents occur in the workplace not because of errors of commission. So it's not because you did something that you knew you weren't supposed to do. It's because of errors of omission. So you have done— you have not done something that you knew you were supposed to do. So it's not for lack of training. You knew you were supposed to do this. But with the complacency that comes with sleepiness and fatigue, then we just kind of like just too tired to care, whatever, right? And you go ahead and you make a mistake and you cause an injury. And there we go.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you said that because the very first thing that people do whenever there's an injury on set is they send out a press release and they say, we are going to increase our training. We're going to make sure we train people properly. And like you said, it's not always a question of that people weren't trained. It's they chose at that moment for whatever reason, they chose not to do or follow the procedure or whatever. Is fatigue at work primarily like, is this for a better word, is this physical? Or are there other aspects to fatigue than just feeling tired?
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great point because we all— so, there's sleepiness when we know that we're actually kind of sleepy and falling asleep. But then, there's fatigue, which is a separate phenomenon. And fatigue is about not having energy and needing to push ourselves, motivate ourselves to keep going. So we all recognize physical fatigue. You know, you've been on your feet all day long, standing at the cash, serving customers, you know, whatever you've been doing, that takes our physical energy and we become physically fatigued. But actually, and so the other one we recognize too is emotional fatigue, because emotional fatigue we recognize as being stressed or being burnt out. And in a workplace where, you know, you're dealing with a lot of customers and they're making making demands on you, or you're dealing with employees all day long who are making demands on you. So we can become emotionally fatigued. But the one actually that I have most concern about in the workplace is mental fatigue. And we don't often think about this, but our brain is very, very active when we are working, and particularly when we are Doing jobs that require us to think. So you're dealing with money, you're working on the computer, you're developing plans, you're doing analysis, all of those kinds of things, or you're working in a, in a big computer control room. Those kinds of jobs require that we use our brain all the time, and our brain uses I think it's about like 25% of our energy at any one time. So we become dehydrated, we become mentally fatigued, and it's the mental fatigue that actually leads us then to have injuries, make mistakes, those kinds of things. So that's the one really that when I'm talking about fatigue in the workplace, I really, really emphasize recognizing mental fatigue.
Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned the mental fatigue part because this is where in the book, I think it was The Power of Habit, the author talks about the fact that we do a lot of things on autopilot. And it's the autopilot thing like people will commute to work and they have no recollection of what they did or how they got to work. They just did it.
Right.
Right? And I remember the very first time we started driving. You had your hands on the wheels. You were panicked about every aspect, trying to take in all this input. And it's impossible for us to do that consistently without burning ourselves out. And so, this actually makes really good sense that the mental fatigue part is really one aspect that we need to address.
Well, and I'm just going to say one thing about that is that we then tend not to recognize that autopilot. And we don't recognize the extent to which we're putting ourselves at risk in that autopilot, whether, you know, you're standing working with a client or you're driving a vehicle. So that's one of the things I try to really emphasize is to kind of take a snapshot. You know, how am I responding right now? Am I doing that out of autopilot? And am I putting myself in danger because of that? That's almost a case of overtraining becomes as dangerous as no training at all. Because when you're not trained at all, you kind of pay a bit more attention and maybe you're making a mistake. But on autopilot, like, yeah, I've done this for 10 years, 100 times a day, and there's a mistake.
Yeah, yeah. And do you think that the When we talked about night owls versus morning people, do you think that the mental fatigue part treats them differently? Or do you think that the mental fatigue part regardless if you're morning or a night owl is going to affect you in basically the same way?
The mental fatigue will affect you the same way. But it'll affect you at different times. So, in the morning when my brain is not actually fully turned on yet, Then, you know, then I have more risk of being complacent about something. Whereas, you know, someone working late at night, whether they're a night owl or an early bird, is— so the early bird, for instance, will have more opportunity for sleepiness at night. But the fatigue is going to affect night owls and early birds equally.
Okay.
They're not, you know, it'll be at different times and sleepiness will be at different times. But they will both be equally affected.
So, it seems to me that as a leader, we need to understand where our people are in this spectrum. But what can leaders do to spot and maximize the efficiencies? Because obviously, if you know that you have a morning person, you know that you have somebody who can get up and get going. And you have people who get going after, let's say after lunch. Should leaders be concerned that maybe we need to be delegating tasks to maximize those efficiencies?
Well, in an ideal world, that's absolutely what I would like to see happen. Because leaders often have the view that this is the business. This is the workplace. We are working 7 to 7 or 7 to 11 or, you know, whatever the timeframe is. And when I schedule you, I expect you to be here and I expect you to be on the top of your game and be working. And that's kind of a false assumption. So I really would like leaders pay attention to, you know, Marc and Carolyn, when do they have the most energy? You know, when are they performing at their best? I want to take advantage of that because I don't want to be paying Carolyn at 7 o'clock in the morning for her to be working at 50%. Like, I don't get value for that, you know.
Hmm.
On the other hand, I can hire Marc. Marc's going to be just like firing on all engines for me. So I think that there's a real advantage not only in performance to be, to, you know, be looking at when people operate best and when are their best performance times? Because then you're getting value for money. You're ensuring that there's gonna be less mistakes. So a key here is to not just be thinking in those terms, but to also be thinking about the possibility of self-scheduling. Now, wouldn't that be revolutionary? Because what happens in almost all workplaces, not all, because this is becoming more common, But the majority of workplaces are still very much functioning on, here's the schedule, see this? This is the schedule, you know, see your time, show up. And we really, you know, there is research too that shows that when people have an opportunity to self-schedule, then, you know, they choose schedules that are more consistent with when they know that they're going to be awake and all of that kind of thing. So if you can do at least a little bit of self-scheduling, you'd find that there's a real advantage to that. And it reduces your turnover and it improves performance. So, there's all kinds of good reasons to do it.
Yeah, my background is in hospitality and it's absolutely brutal for scheduling. I mean, we ran a 19-hour workday. And where the challenge came in was when we tried to toy around with this idea of self-scheduling. It wasn't— people weren't self-scheduling based on when they were the most effective. They were self-scheduling based on when am I going to make the most money because it's a tipping industry.
Yeah.
And there's, you know, we recognize that 19-hour workdays where we had shifts where, you know, we had a small, small pool of people in the morning to the early afternoon. But then, the majority of our staff get shifted in the evenings. And then, come Friday and Saturdays, those were our biggest nights and we had the most part-time people on. The shift work required in healthcare though, so healthcare, policing, a schwack of other businesses that run around the clock. In hospitality, I had 19 hours to contend with. How much harder is it to schedule 24 hours?
Well, it is more because in hospitality, as you're saying, you might go to 2, 3, even 4 AM. And when— and so those people going home at, you know, 3 or 4 AM still actually get an opportunity to catch part of a nighttime period of sleeping. Whereas people who actually work through until 7 or 8 AM, They've lost their full night, right? So now they are forced to sleep their entire sleep period during the day when our body is designed to be awake in the daytime. Our body is working very hard to try to keep us awake in the daytime. So the people who are actually working 24-hour or are in 24-hour workplaces, do have this additional stress and fatigue that comes with having to sleep in the daytime for sure.
This is really fascinating. So, we've heard this idea of the rhythm. This, what is it, psychodium rhythm?
Circadian.
Circadian rhythm. And how much does that come into play? Like once somebody works 30 days working nights, are they okay then to be working night shifts or do we still have to be concerned about You know, when we're naturally— we have a natural propensity for daytime versus nighttime.
Yeah. No. So the research has shown that no one, even after, as you're saying, 30 nights, assuming that, you know, that was 30 nights of working every night, that even after 30 nights, people don't ever fully become night people. The circadian rhythms that keep us functioning as daytime people are still there. Now, the only thing that happens is that the amplitude kind of lessens so that, you know, you're somewhat, you know, not getting up to what your fully body temperature or all your other circadian functions would be during the day, but they're still there.
Mm-hmm.
So no one ever becomes fully night people. An interesting thing that you have happen actually And hospitality is an example of this. It's where you have people, because of the nature of work, as you're saying, you know, where it is, you know, late evening and weekends and that kind of work, is that there is a subset of people who are just better adapted to that. They are more night owl type people. And what you'll find is that more of the early bird type people don't survive in that kind of a workplace as easily, or they have greater stress, greater fatigue, greater sleep deprivation because they're just not designed to be awake much beyond 8 or 9 o'clock at night. So they struggle more. And so there you find that after a while there's just, as I say, the subset of people that gravitate to that kind of work. Now you also then get You know, parents, for instance, who are responsible for childcare during the day, and then the other partner is home at night. And so they go and work and, you know, maybe it's not the best timing for them, but they have to do it. And those are the people that we actually, you know, as a leader, those are the people that you need to be concerned about. You know, are they doing it not because it's their preference, but, you know, They need that income and it works for their family life and so forth. And that's why this idea of just disciplining someone because they happen to be tired is just not a good idea. You need to, if they're a good employee, work with them. Maybe you need to make some adjustments on their schedule. But don't just throw them away.
Yeah, it's so interesting because this is the second time that you've really mentioned this. And it really boils down to this idea of communicating with them. In past episodes, we've talked about the need for leaders to be opening the door to these communications to really get to know their teams. The idea of coaching programs and mentorship programs where you have great access to the employees so you have a thorough understanding of what is driving this person and what their needs are as well. You know, this is really fascinating. And you know, you and I, we spoke the other day and we took our 30-minute our 30-minute conversation into like an hour and a half. We could talk forever about this. But before we dip into actual strategies that address workplace sleepiness, could you let everybody know how they can get in touch with you if they say, wow, I gotta get Carolyn in here because I need some things fixed?
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, which is usually the best way to communicate with me is to just send me a message on LinkedIn. You could Send me— you could go to my website, carolinshear.com, and you can contact me that way. Just send me a message that way. I will see those. That's probably the easiest ways to get a hold of me.
And of course, the website, right? Now, you say Carolyn Shear. And could you— so, the spelling is on the screen so you don't have to—
Yeah, it's just carolinshear.com. So yeah, the spelling's on the screen. Easy.
Great! I hope this is making sense and is of value to you. Please feel free to give me a thumbs up and share your comments or questions in the comment box. This is really, you know, this is a really important conversation. It's something we don't talk a lot when we talk about business. We don't talk about this idea of fatigue in the workplace and how it might be affecting you. So, go ahead and put comments in the comment box and let's start the conversation. Let's see what you have to say. I'm really looking forward to getting into strategies that businesses can use to mitigate fatigue in the workplace. And we will get to that right after this.
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Welcome back! It's so nice to have you here. We are talking about workplace fatigue. And one of the biggest issues that we're hearing now is this idea of Zoom fatigue. I I hear about it in my groups, especially the groups that meet at night now. I used to have night meetings where we would meet in person. And now that we're having night Zoom meetings, people are exhausted. Is this a real thing?
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And one of the interesting things I actually learned about this from my brother is a screenwriter and composer. And they translated I guess translated is not the word. They took a stage play and turned it into a film. And it's really interesting, his views on how that changes, because one of the things is that watching a screen, our brain becomes very tired. We can't seem to interact with a screen the way that we do with a live presentation. And so on the screen, Our fatigue builds up much, much more. And for some reason, our brain has to work so much harder. So yeah, Zoom fatigue, absolutely a thing.
So, what's the difference then? You said this idea of watching screens. I mean, I know people who completely kind of zombie out after their shift. And they'll sit in front of their TV set for like the next 6 hours before they go to bed. What's the difference between doing that versus sitting in front of their computer screen?
Well, when you're couch surfing and watching television, you're not really— you're not as focused on the television screen because you're maybe just thinking about other things and kind of catching every second sentence and all of that kind of thing. Whereas with the computer monitor and with Zoom, you're entirely focused Like right here, and you're having to pay attention to everything that's being said and done. So you can't as easily kind of like, you know, sort of half be reflecting. Um, you have to be very, very focused here so that you're hearing everything, paying attention to everything. So your brain is working very, very hard and it's not getting a break. So that's why one of the things, you know, like In your episode here where you're doing these little breaks, kind of like, you know, what is that, every 10 minutes or something? That is so important for the brain because the brain just needs this time to rest. So I know you want to talk about strategies, and so this is, I think, a perfect segue for that, is one of the things that we absolutely need to do in the workplace is to allow for sufficient rest breaks. And, you know, so we schedule in, you know, a break, say half an hour every 3 or 4 hours or something or other, and that's great, but when you're in a situation like this where you're, you know— So, for example, in a casino, the dealers trade off quite frequently because we know That the opportunity for them to make mistakes or not be on top of their game is there. So they get these rest breaks really frequently. And the other thing that they do is, is they might move to a different game, which is another good thing. Is if you can have people who are cross-trained and they can go from one job to the other, or one task to a different task, then you prevent this kind of autopilot situation. So, 2 things in terms of strategies: make sure you have sufficient rest breaks, and those rest breaks, don't wait until, you know, coffee time 3 hours from now. In a situation like this, where you're constantly, you know, using your brain, sometimes you just need to just stop and just look away, and if you can look at something green or something nature, Even just that momentary break. You know, I had a colleague, a friend of mine is an accountant and a bookkeeper. She does accounting for small businesses, and she told me one time that she's very meticulous. She couldn't find a dollar, and she was bound and determined that she was going to find this dollar. And she tried, and she tried, and she tried, and she. She couldn't find this dollar, so she said, heck with it. She got up, she walked to the kitchen area, she got a cup of coffee, she came back. So what is that? You know, 2, 3, 5 minutes maybe, right? She comes back and she looks and there's the dollar that she had spent all this time. That's just such a beautiful indicator of how you just need these momentary breaks. You just need to give your brain a break. You, you know, you need to just give your psyche a break if you're having customers at you all the time. So do these Yeah.
And you know, yeah, I've seen where— so of course, my background with casinos. Absolutely, every 45 minutes, dealers would take a break. And then, they would come back and they'd be doing different jobs. They do different games. And it was one way to keep them fresh and keep them focused on what they were doing, right? But you see businesses like grocery stores where you have somebody on cash for hours at a time just doing one transaction after another transaction. And they look for, oh, in 2 hours I could take my 15-minute breaks. 2 hours after that, I could take my 30-minute break. And really, that's their only thing of pushing forward to get that break. But then, the grocery store manager just recently fired somebody because they made a $70 mistake. They went through the process and somebody walked out with $70 worth of groceries. Oh my goodness! It never went through the transaction. And so, the owner fired them. And my thought process was, you just paid $78 to teach this employee how to become more focused, or the outfall of what it takes to be more focused. Why are you firing them?
Yeah, and the unfortunate part about that is that if in fact it was a fatigue mistake, that person hasn't learned anything, right? And so one of the things in terms of strategies is I like for managers, for leaders, to look at what are the work processes that are actually inducing fatigue or inducing it at a higher level, right?
Mm-hmm.
So this is a perfect example of where That constant work induces fatigue. And so, we need to look at that and say, is there something in the way that we structure work that is causing fatigue and is causing mistakes to be made?
And so, right there, the assessment then becomes both mental and physical. Is it repetitive tasks? Is it doing the same thing over and over? What are you doing to switch things up? And then, of course, the mental aspect to it. How much focus does the job require? Yeah, that's really interesting. So, when it comes down, we mentioned Zoom. When we talk about having all these meetings on Zoom then, what do people need to do? People who are coordinating these meetings, what do they need to do in order to make sure that they have the freshest people on the call at that moment?
Well, I, you know, absolutely the first thing is, like you are doing here, is either have a break every 10 minutes or so, and it does need to be frequent, or you do some kind of an interaction, you know, something that causes people to not have to be completely focused, but they can either have a breakout room or engage in an activity. Some kind of interaction that gives their brain a break is what you're— I used to many, many years ago, and I've kind of let it go, but I used to talk about having brain breaks, you know, because we understand having butt breaks. You know, you're sitting in the chair for a long time and you need to get up and stretch, but we need to have brain breaks. And that's what with Zoom. So, you have a break or you do some kind of an interaction or something that just gets people focused away from the screen.
Yeah, and it's interesting you said that because a couple of episodes ago, I had Chris Nielsen talking about how important improv games can be, whether it's actually on Zoom or in person. How you can use very quick, very short exercises that get people to pull their attention away so that when they come back to it now, they are fresher about it with it.
Yeah, yeah.
I can definitely see that some people might be on this episode and thinking now they're putting a checklist together of all the things they need to do when they get back now. Are there any cautionaries to what we're talking about today? Is it possible for people to too concerned or go too far with this idea of making sure that their staff are fresh?
Well, I think you can go overboard and then start to be— we were saying that you want to pay more attention to what's happening to people's lives outside of work. You know, and is that impacting work? But you don't want to start to be, you know, kind of like big government where you're starting to say, "Oh no, you can't do that in your time off." That that is actually a big problem where employers know that, for instance, people have a second job, and then they come to. the one job and they're tired because they haven't slept because they've been at this other job. So you can't start to say, oh no, you can't have that second job, right? So your focus always has to be on performance in your workplace.
Yeah.
Because that's the only thing that you have responsibility and authority for, right? So your focus with the employee always has to be, okay, our concern is performance at this workplace. What needs to happen to ensure that I'm getting the money that I paid you for and that you're not at risk and able to perform, you know, to the level that is required here? So I think if you keep that as your focus and Regardless of what the situation is, it's right here. The performance for this job is what my concern is and what needs to happen to make sure that we get the best performance that we can here.
And again, it boils down to this idea of communication, of being open and talking with your staff to say, here's our objective. What will it take? What do you need from us In order so that you can perform effectively. And they'll tell you. Carolin, this has been so great. I can't thank you enough for coming and doing this show with me. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?
So, check out LinkedIn, Carolin Schurr on LinkedIn. And you can find me there. Send me a message. And you can also just go to my website, carolinshurr.com, and you can send me a message there. And you can also see other resources there, other articles.
And you also have on your website, you have 5 strategies that business owners can use as well.
Yeah, it's actually an ebook, a free downloadable ebook that's called 5 Essential Management Strategies for Shift Work Workplaces. Yeah, so some of the things that we've talked about are there. And yeah, you can download that and check out, see what applies to your workplace and how you can make it better.
Terrific! And we'll make sure that we put the link to that ebook in the show notes that people can download it from this site as well. Carolyn, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here to share your knowledge, your passion, and your expertise. This has been brilliant.
Great! Thank you. I can talk about this forever. So, I always enjoy the opportunity. Thank you for giving me that opportunity.
Thank you for sharing. It's been awesome! Why don't you give me a thumbs up if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, why don't you reach out and book yourself on my online calendar? The link is down below. It's the one that's marked meetme.marchaine.com. So, /MarcHaine and book 30 minutes. We'll talk about whatever you need to talk about. This is 30 minutes of you time. And as always, I am of service to you. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you hit the subscribe button and ring the bell? That'll give you first dibs whenever I bring you content that will help you work on your business, not just in your business. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe. Stay healthy, and I hope that you can dare to be the exception.
