Work schedules should consider body clocks
Bosses who are morning types are prone to discriminating against employees who prefer evenings.
Differences in body clocks that determine whether people perform better in the morning or evening can affect how well they work together in a team.
Research from the University of Sydney shows that emergency workers and surgical teams perform best when individual members peak at the same time of the day.
Surgical teams, emergency service workers, orchestras and executives in long board meetings would benefit from having people with similar biological clocks.
But long-haul flight crews including teams of pilots, nurses on long shifts, and police on surveillance can work better if they include a mix of ‘‘morning’’ and ‘‘night’’ people so that at least one crew member is working at their peak at different times of the day.
Findings of the study published in the international journal Academy of Management Review suggest employers wanting peak performance and productivity from workers should account for their circadian rhythms.
Stefan Volk, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School, said the research revealed how workplaces could capitalise on people with different chronotypes, or body clocks.
‘‘These physiological differences matter a lot in the work context and we have to understand how it affects teams,’’ he said.
‘‘When people are different, it can be positive or negative depending on the specific task they are performing. If members of a surgical team are different chronotypes, that is not ideal.’’
Bosses who were morning types were also prone to discriminating against employees who were evening types because they were not in the office as early as them.
Evening people who were forced to show up early in the morning were often less productive for the first two or three hours of their shift. It was better for them to start and finish later to be more productive.
Volk’s fiancee, Marie Mulherin, 31, and her stepfather, Jeffrey Buckle, both work for banks in Sydney, but their performance peaks at different times of the day. Mulherin is a night person and her father is a morning person.
‘‘I am on the road a lot and lucky to have flexible work hours, which means I can schedule my own appointments. It means I can start a little later and work into the evening,’’ Mulherin, a business consultant, said. ‘‘I am working optimally from midday.’’
Buckle, a bank manager, typically gets up at 5.30am and is at work by 7.15am.
‘‘I’m one of the first people in and you get a lot more done because no-one else is around. You are awake and able to get on with it,’’ he said. ‘‘But you do slow down in the afternoon.’’
Volk said employers had not considered that people could peak at different times of the day and how this could affect how they worked together in teams.
Professor Shantha Rajaratnam from Monash University, who researches circadian rhythms, has found that they impact on performance, mood and general functioning at different times of the day.
Professor Leon Lack from the Flinders University school of psychology said it made sense to have a mix of evening and morning types on a long-haul flight.
Lack, who has led research into therapies for people with insomnia and jet lag, said people’s behavioural patterns were influenced by the time of day they were most alert.
‘‘The alertness of evening people increases at a slower rate and they may feel their best two or three hours before their bedtime,’’ he said. ‘‘This can develop into a behavioural tendency to delay going to bed.’’ –Sydney Morning Herald