WHAT EFFECT WILL SLEEP DEPRIVATION, DUE TO THE 3/12 COMPRESSED WORK SCHEDULE, HAVE ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN A MEDIUM-SIZED CALIFORNIA LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY BY 2008?
Abstract
by
Lieutenant Marc Taylor
This research projects explores how sleep deprivation resulting from the 3/12 compressed work schedule will affect employee performance in law enforcement agencies of between 100 and 300 sworn personnel by 2008. The paper starts by looking at performance issues associated with sleep deprived employees. Information is provided as to how sleep deprivation affects an individual’s performance and what constitutes sleep deprivation. The second chapter reflects the results of a Nominal Group Technique exercise that was conducted with a panel of subject matter experts. These experts identified trends and events that may impact the necessity for fatigue management. The third chapter presents a strategic plan to reduce or eliminate employee sleep deprivation through a fatigue management program. An analysis of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is conducted. Implementation strategies are developed and costs are analyzed. The fourth chapter provides a transition management plan to allow the implementation of a fatigue management plan. A critical mass analysis is provided to better understand the roles of the various stakeholders, to examine their influence and overcome their resistance to insure implementation. The final chapter concludes that a fatigue management plan is required to reduce or eliminate sleep deprivation of employees working the 3/12 compressed work schedule. The project includes footnotes, tables, appendices, and a bibliography.
WHAT EFFECT WILL SLEEP DEPRIVATION, DUE TO THE 3/12 COMPRESSED WORK SCHEDULE, HAVE ON EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE IN A MEDIUM-SIZED CALIFORNIA LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY BY 2008?
A project presented to
California Commission on
Peace Officer Standards and Training
By
Lieutenant Marc Taylor
West Covina Police Department
CommandCollege Class XXXV
Sacramento, California
November 2003
This Command College Project is a FUTURES study of a particular emerging issue in law enforcement. Its purpose is NOT to predict the future, but rather to project a number of possible scenarios for strategic planning considerations.
Defining the future differs from analyzing the past because the future has not yet happened. In this project, useful alternatives have been formulated systematically so that the planner can respond to a range of possible future environments.
Managing the future means influencing the future; creating it, constraining it, adapting to it. A futures study points the way.
The view and conclusions expressed in this CommandCollege project are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).
Copyright 2003
California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training
1
This project, written under the guidance and approval of the student’s agency, mentor and advisor, has been presented to and accepted by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, State of California, in fulfillment of the requirements of Command College Class Thirty-Five.
Marc Taylor, LieutenantDate
West Covina Police Department
Student
Frank J. Wills, Chief of PoliceDate
West Covina Police Department
David Smith, LieutenantDate
Torrance Police Department
Mentor
______Alicia Powers Date
POST
Senior Consultant
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES...... iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iv
CHAPTER I...... 1
ISSUE IDENTIFICATION...... 1
Introduction...... 1
Understanding Fatigue...... 2
Circadian Rythems...... 5
CHAPTER II...... 11
FUTURES STUDY...... 11
Introduction...... 11
Nominal Group Technique...... 12
Trends...... 13
Events...... 21
Cross Impact Analysis...... 27
Alternative Scenarios...... 30
Optimistic Scenario...... 30
Pessimistic Scenario...... 33
Normative Scenario...... 37
Conclusion...... 38
CHAPTER III...... 40
STRATEGIC PLAN...... 40
Introduction...... 40
Mission ...... 41
Organizational Analysis...... 42
Internal Strengths...... 43
Internal Weaknesses...... 43
External Opportunities...... 44
External Threats...... 45
Stakeholder Analysis...... 45
Stakeholders...... 46
Snaildarters...... 54
Strategy Development...... 55
Strategy One...... 55
Strategy Two...... 57
Strategy Selection...... 58
Implementation Plan...... 59
Cost Analysis...... 60
CHAPTER IV...... 62
TRANSITION MANAGEMENT...... 62
Introduction...... 62
Commitment Planning...... 64
Critical Mass Analysis...... 65
Management Structure...... 68
Responsibility Charting...... 69
CHAPTER V...... 72
CONCLUSION...... 72
Project Summary...... 72
Evaluation Activities...... 73
Recommendations for the Future Research...... 74
Implications for Leadership...... 74
Conclusion...... 76
THE APPENDICES...... 77
Appendix A...... 77
List of Nominal Group Technique Participants...... 77
Appendix B...... 78
List of Trends...... 78
Appendix C...... 79
List of Events...... 79
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 80
LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
2.1Trend Evaluation Table 14
2.2Event Evaluation Table 22
2.3Cross Impact Analysis Matrix 28
4.1Critical Mass Analysis Chart 65
4.2Responsibility Chart 70
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the members of the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training for their continual support of the Command College Program, the staff and faculty of Class 35 for the diversity of information presented to the class, and Tom Esensten for his wisdom and insight.
Thank you to my Chief, Frank J. Wills and Commander John Schimanski for their support and encouragement in my CommandCollege efforts.
A special thank you to my classmates for their support and challenges that helped make the entire CommandCollege experience more meaningful.
My sincere gratitude to the panel of experts who served as members of my Nominal Group Technique, who provided excellent information along with making the process an enjoyable experience: Debbie Dominguez, Michelle Figueroa, Carlos Guerrero, Mari Ladnier, Don Morrin, Darrell Myrick, Jan Poirier, Dan Sullivan, Mark Tedesco, and Carol Wilk.
My appreciation and gratitude to my mentor and friend, Lieutenant David Smith of the Torrance Police Department who inspired me with his wisdom, knowledge and motivation.
Most importantly, my deepest thanks to my family: my wife Betty, daughter Bianca, and son Adam who were extremely encouraging throughout my CommandCollege experience. Their love, understanding and support allowed me to justify the long hours away from them to complete my goal.
1
CHAPTER ONE
ISSUE IDENTIFICATION
“No man can really be big who does not read widely outside of his own field.”
Theodore N. Vail[1]
Introduction
This project examines the effects of sleep deprivation on employee performance, as a result of the 3/12 compressed work schedule in medium size California law enforcement agencies by 2008. The project seeks to establish whether there is a loss of work performance by employees as a result of sleep deprivation (fatigue) while assigned to a 3/12 compressed work schedule and if there are better ways available to manage their on-duty time to lessen the effects. In a time when police departments are trying to get the maximum performance from their employees and deliver the highest level of customer service to their citizens, the work schedules that are authorized by these same departments may be counter-productive to their goal. There are many variations to the 3/12 compressed work schedule. For this project, the 3/12 is defined as a schedule in which an employee normally works three days per week and at least twelve hours per day.
Chapter One will define sleep deprivation and examine its effects on employee performance. It will identify symptoms of fatigue and explain the effects of fatigue and sleep loss on the brain. This chapter will also look at the increasing demands being placed on officers in regards to shift coverage due to lack of available manpower, training mandates, and mandatory court appearances.
Chapter Two will describe the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) process which was used in this project to identify trends and events that may affect the continuing practice of police departments using the 3/12 compressed work schedule. After identifying these trends and events, the results of a cross-impact analysis is presented to see how these trends and events could impact each other. After analyzing these trends, events, and the information in the cross-impact analysis, three scenarios that show possible futures will be presented.
Chapter Three will look at the necessary strategic planning needed to manage the 3/12 work schedule. This will ensure that employees are capable of properly performing their duties and are meeting the goals of productivity set forth by individual police departments.
Chapter Four will focus on transition management. This will guide the law enforcement agency from where it currently is as an organization, to where it needs to be to ensure the highest quality of service to its customers.
Chapter Five will conclude the project and bring all the information together. Recommendations will be made to help ensure that employee performance is maintained at the highest possible level.
Understanding Fatigue
“He conquers who endures”
Persius[2]
Webster’s dictionary has several definitions for fatigue: “1) weariness from labor or exertion; 2) nervous exhaustion; 3) the temporary loss of power to respond induced in a sensory receptor or motor end organ by continued stimulation; 4) the tendency of a material to break under repeated stress.” [3] However, the term “fatigue” has not yet been defined in a concrete fashion.[4] In human performance literature, fatigue is presented as the “deterioration in human performance, arising as a consequence of several potential factors, including sleepiness.” [5] According to Roth, “Sleepiness, according to an emerging consensus among sleep researchers, and clinicians, is a basic physiological state (like) hunger or thirst. Deprivation or restriction of sleep increases sleepiness and as hunger or thirst is reversible by eating or drinking, respectively, sleep reverses sleepiness.” [6] Fatigue is treated as a concept that occurs in response to predefined conditions and has physiological and performance consequences.
The cumulative effect of sleep debt is significant in two respects. As would be expected, sleep deprived individuals do not perform as well as rested ones, particularly in monotonous tasks, such as driving a car. Secondly, sleep deprivation studies have shown an additional impairment upon job performance through the worker’s motivation and attitude. Absenteeism, tardiness and carelessness are common to irritable shift workers and these issues might outweigh the direct influences of sleep deprivation upon performance levels.
Regulatory agencies, such as the National Transportation Safety Board and Nuclear Regulatory Commission have attributed many serious human errors to sleep deprivation. The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear disasters have been attributed in part to fatigued shift workers. Scores of railroad accidents and countless highway accidents have been attributed to inadequate sleep. Most sleep related accidents occur between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.[7]
The cumulative effect of sleep deprivation aggravates job stress. It also has an effect on the individual’s ability to cope with the stress. In the United States, non-police males have a greater life expectancy than peace officers. This statistic lends itself in part to the fact that lack of sleep due to continued shift work negatively affects a person’s overall health.[8]
There are four critical factors to examine when looking at how fatigue affects performance:
1. Time on task, including duty period duration.
2. Time since awake when beginning the duty period.
3. Acute and chronic sleep debt.
4. Circadian disruption and shift work.
Time on task and duty period duration focus on the amount of time an individual spends performing a specific task. Factors that increase fatigue include boring or monotonous work, stressful work and extended duty periods.
Time since awake when beginning the duty period is often a problem found with police personnel assigned to shift work. On an employee’s “Monday,” when assigned to the graveyard shift, officers typically rise in the morning, spend the day performing off-duty tasks, and then come to work after being awake for more than 8-10 hours. They then conduct their duty shift, which may be in excess of 12 hours. The fact that they are working a 12-hour shift is not as critical as the fact that they are starting the shift after being awake for an extended period. It is the cumulative amount of hours that the individual is awake that affects performance.
Acute and chronic sleep debt comes into play when the totality of the responsibilities that officers have in both their professional and personal life are examined. Marriage, children, social obligations and education weigh heavily on their personal side. Normal duty hours, court, overtime, training, travel time, and collateral duties weigh on the professional side. Either one of these, professional or personal, would be enough to affect a person’s sleep, but when combined, affect the individual exponentially.
Circadian Rhythms
Shift work affects the body’s circadian clock, which regulates different bodily functions at different times of the day. Some of these bodily functions include regulating body temperature, urine production, and levels of blood steroids. The circadian system is not able to adjust instantaneously to changes in routine, such as shift work. In addition, a person’s ability to adjust to shift work deteriorates with age.[9] Humans are by nature diurnal (day oriented) as opposed to nocturnal (night oriented) beings, meaning that physiological functions are geared towards daytime activity and night time rest.
Research has shown in fact that physiological functions fluctuate in cycles, or rhythms, which are regulated by an internal biological clock in the brain. These rhythms range from minutes, for example in the stages of sleep, to days, such as in the female menstruation cycle.[10] Studies have shown that the main physiological functions such as core body temperature, hormone production, heart rate, blood pressure, gastric activity, and the sleep/wakecycle, all have cycles or rhythms of approximately 25 hours. These cycles are known as circadian rhythms (from the Latin 'circa' meaning about, and 'dia' meaning a day).[11] Normally circadian rhythms are synchronizedto one another by the internal biological clock. They are reset daily to the 24 hour day and night cycle by externaltime cues, namely the variation in sunlight and an increase in environmental and family activity. A typical cycle of core body temperature, for example, normally has two peaks (around 1130 hours and 1900 hours) and two troughs (around 0400 hours and 1400 hours).[12] When people work rotating shifts, they have to adjust their natural sleep and wake cycle to suit whichever shift they are on. However, other circadian rhythms do not adjust instantaneously; in fact, different rhythms change at different rates and typically take a week or more to adjust to the new sleep and wake cycle. A useful analogy is that of an orchestra where initially the different sections are playing in harmony under the one conductor. If another conductor appears and starts a different beat there will be discord as the different sections change at their own rate to the new beat.[13]
Rotating onto a night shift causes the greatest disruption to circadian rhythms. This is because an attempt is made to remain active and alert during the night when circadian rhythms are falling to their lowest and to sleep during the day when circadian rhythms are rising to their peaks. When this happens, a person can experience sleep loss and gastrointestinal problems. Loss of sleep leads to fatigue, irritability, lethargy and a decline in performance such as poorer concentration, lower level of alertness and impaired decision making. This in turn increases the risk of making errors which may affect not only an individual’s own safety but also that of his or her colleagues.[14] How quickly circadian rhythms adjust to a new sleep/wake cycle depends on internal and external factors. These internal factors, such as the age, gender, physical health and chronotypeof the individual, along with external factors such as the shift pattern, work load, family and social circumstances affect the adjustment. If someone rotates onto another shift before the circadian rhythms have had time to adjust to one sleep and wake cycle, then the circadian rhythms may become in a perpetual state of internal desynchronization where they are never fully synchronized to one another. The effects of shift work on circadian rhythms cannot be eliminated completely. However, there are steps that can be taken at both the organizational level and individual level to minimize these effects. The Albuquerque, New Mexico, Police Department (APD) conducted a study on the effects of sleep disorders and fatigue as it relates to public safety officials. The National Sleep Foundation assisted them in developing a special program which was aimed at reducing sleep deprivation among officers, particularly those working the graveyard shift. The APD program was begun in December 1998 and was designed to identify incidences and effects of sleep deprivation among department personnel. The department then applied intervention solutions to alleviate the adverse effects of sleep deprivation. The results of the study showed that the personnel working the ten-hour shift from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. had the most sleep deprivation. The department found that employees were driving while drowsy, had a greater inability to cope with minor irritations, had trouble remembering things, were less physically fit, and had a greater inability to enjoy family life.[15] As a result of their findings, the Albuquerque Police Department implemented changes in their standard operating procedures manual. The major change was implementing a sixty-hour work cap on the number of hours officers can work in one week. This cap includes department overtime as well as outside employment. These two items had been unrestricted in the past. The department also sponsored a shift work adjustment class to help their personnel working the graveyard shift with the issues and concerns regarding sleep deprivation. The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) praised the APD study, which illustrated the dangers of fatigue and sleep deprivation for both the individual and society. The NSF feels that sleep deprivation is a particular problem for this nation’s growing force of shift workers, especially peace officers, who are expected to be highly productive and alert at a time when their bodies want to sleep.[16]