Working the late shift

VANCOUVER, Wash. – The tricks Sabrina Magsam played on her body began the moment she left Southwest Washington Medical Center after finishing her shift in the hospital’s lab.

She donned dark sunglasses to dull the sun’s awakening effect. She draped blankets over the bedroom windows at home. A fan droned on while she slept, creating white noise to block out the sounds of suburbia.

In the end, the ploys did little to convince Magsam’s body that day was night.

“I felt groggy pretty much all of the time,” she said of the year spent working the midnight shift at the Vancouver, Wash., hospital.

Magsam’s experience isn’t unique for the legions of people who toil while the rest of us sleep. But she is part of a growing number of white-collar employees who find themselves working outside the traditional 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. shift as the global economy creeps closer to a never-ending business cycle.

Brian O’Neill, marketing and communications manager for Circadian Technologies Inc. in Lexington, Mass., said the new face of the shift worker is the New York stock trader who is up by 3 a.m. to work the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the person answering calls throughout the night at a call center.

“We’re seeing a sweeping increase in more service sector, financial services and information technology (jobs),” O’Neill said.

Circadian is a research and consulting firm that helps companies increase performance and safety for employees who work odd shifts. Circadian’s studies have found U.S. businesses lose $206 billion a year from extended-hour schedules.

Circadian found that $80 billion of that lost money comes from a 5 percent drop in productivity and excessive overtime that impacts efficiency. Another $50.4 billion is lost because extended-hour employees are more than twice as likely to be absent for work.

O’Neill’s company draws its name from the internal clock that regulates human sleep patterns. While a segment of society is easily able to adapt to working odd hours, the difficulties of working a night shift are numerous.

Fatigue, depression, eating disorders and lack of exercise are just a few of the obstacles night workers face.

Circadian’s consulting arm teaches companies how to educate employees about the dangers and solutions.

The midnight shift is a love-hate relationship for Larry Knight, owner of Knighthawk Protection, a security-services business in Vancouver. He oversees administration duties during the day, goes home for a few hours of sleep and hits the streets at night. The schedule is stressful, but one filled with work he loves.

Knight said he stresses to his 33 employees the need to get sleep, eat right and exercise regularly in order to be alert while patrolling the businesses and apartment complexes that hire the firm.

Kerri Glovka is a relative newcomer to working nights. She began working from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. four months ago as a call-center supervisor.

“I was a little scared of staying up all night and remaining coherent,” she said.

Glovka has found a groove that keeps her going. The call center handles between 250 and 400 calls a night; when business is slow, she finds a jolt of energy at the nearby Starbucks, also open 24 hours a day.

At home, Glovka says she sleeps fewer hours than before, but sleeps more deeply.

The new schedule allows Glovka and her husband to share the duties of caring for their 3-year-old daughter, which cuts down on child-care costs.

Glovka said many of the 13 people she supervises prefer the night shift because of child-care issues and the ability to attend school during the day.

The advantages of working at night are becoming a greater lure, particularly for young workers who have the energy and like the higher pay, O’Neill said.

The challenge for companies is to capitalize on those attitudes while lowering operational costs and avoiding the pitfalls, O’Neill said.

He believes companies are sitting on a gold mine of unrealized revenues if they can better harness the potential of night-shift employees.