Swing shift vs straight shift
In terms of worker mental well being do you think swing shift works better or straight shift.
I’ve never worked a true swing shift, but three years ago I worked as an operations technician at a natural gas plant. Every third night I was on call and often had to respond to outages at like 2am. It was absolutely miserable - for me an inconsistent sleep schedule is very disruptive to my personal life.
So which shift schedule do you guys think is healthier?
Comments (17)
Rotating shifts are the worst. The science on shift work is workers should stick with one shift and not rotate.
I really think it depends on the individual. To use myself as an example, I tend to perform much better and enjoy night shift over a regular day shift. I tend to be more awake and alert starting at about 8 pm very night. But, as others have said, it needs to be a consistent schedule.
I am currently working night shift 1830-0500. We work four 10 hour shifts a week. It is hard on my 55 year old body.
What shift works best for people depends on their preference. I am a swing shift person. I love to sleep in each morning and when I am not assigned to night shift, I usually stay up until 1 or 2 each morning. My wife is a morning person. She likes to be up and going in the morning and is usually in bed by 2100.
As others have said, shift work is bad for the human body. Night shift is the worst.
There is a ton of research being published on this topic! From what I’ve seen, there tend to be worse health outcomes from swing and night shifts. I’ll try to find some citations once I have access to my computer!
I’d say that any regular shift is fine. What I see as rough is a rotating shift where the person’s schedule is always changing.