What problem?
People who are fatigued think and move more slowly, make more mistakes, and can have memory difficulties. These effects reduce productivity and increase the risk of work related errors and accidents. Fatigued personnel does not perform at their maximum potential.
Why improve?
Improving sleep quality increases focus and concentration thus helping employees to make split-second decisions. It will result in better performance and increased employee well being. Better sleep patterns improve productivity, health, and safety.
Why choose us?
Night Fit is based on solutions already applied at NASA [1] and the military industry. We currently work together with innovative organisations such as Allseas, Audittrail and the Dutch Military. Night Fit combines a proven method with experience and expertise.
The Braintraining and Work Hard, Sleep Hard workshops in high performance sectors
Healthcare sector
The healthcare sector demands work to be continued through the night. However, human beings are not built to work during the night. Naturally, our body is programmed to ensure that energy, alertness, concentration, and other aspects relating to mental and physical performance peak during the day. In addition, our brain is ‘programmed’ to sleep at night. As a result, the inability to sleep and high fatigue levels are common problems in the healthcare sector.
Workshops and sleep glasses
Our sleep enhancing strategies are taught to the participants in one or two interactive workshops. In addition, at the end of the workshop, each participant will receive their own pair of Somnoblue glasses. This will help healthcare workers to more fully recharge their brain and body between their shifts, and thus increases their overall performance and resilience to fatigue risks.
The following topics are discussed during the workshop(s):
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- Sleep, fatigue and our brain
- The biological clock, sleep, health and safety
- The mismatch between our biological clock and the shift work schedule (circadian misalignment)
- Sleep hygiene strategies during the day
- Sleep hygiene strategies for the evening and at night
- Energy boosters during work
- The effect of the timing, duration, color, and intensity of light on the biological clock, melatonin and sleep
- The use of Somnoblue glasses during shift work
- Nutrition during (night) work
- Powernaps
- Relaxation / mindfulness strategies
Findings from our previous projects at other ‘high-performance industries’ are used in order to explain the strategies and to motivate the participants. This helps them to keep using the strategies correctly during future shift work.
We’ve provided the Night Fit workshops and Somnoblue glasses at Haga Hospital (at the cardiac intensive care unit and at the gastro-intestinal unit), Maasstad Hospital (at the Intensive Care), St Antonius (Intensive Care), Isala Zwolle (Oncology dep.), Leiden University Medical Center (Intensive Care, WAKZ en Nicu/GHL). For more information about the shift work interventions, please read the following interview at Vrijheid in de zorg (Dutch).
Offshore industry
Next to reducing incidents of personal harm, safety also plays a big role in the oil & gas industry to reduce the risks of large accidents with environmental consequences. In addition, poor sleep is expensive; Lack of Sleep Costs U.S. About $411 Billion in Lost Productivity, Study Finds. Night Fit is an effective tool to reduce these costs and to enhance human performance and safety.
Click here to read more about fatigue, human error and process safety
We’ve presented our Fatigue countermeasures method Night Fit at the following conferences:
IADC Drilling HSE&T (video) Europe Conference on 28 September in (Amsterdam 2017)
Society of Petroleum Engineers (Science paper and presentation) Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (San Antonio Texas 2017)
IADC (article) Human Factors Conference in (Galveston, Texas 2016)
Work Hard, Sleep Hard Brochure Offshore
Our latest Night Fit offshore projects
Our Latest Clients
Legal, Finance & Consulting
At these firms, targets are set at high levels and errors can be very costly. Our workshop ‘Work Hard, Sleep Hard’ apply effective sleep-enhancing strategies which help to increase the efficiency of sleep without the use of medication. Our workshop ‘Braintraining – Work Smart and Recover Effectively’ will help to improve your focus, energy, and overall wellbeing. One of these strategies employs timed light-exposure using Somnoblue glasses which – when worn just prior to bedtime – help to achieve a more efficient sleep. As high-quality sleep helps our brain to function optimally, our workshops will help employees to be more productive and to make better decisions. Additionally, it will help to improve their mental and physical health.
Maximizing human potential
Improving sleep quality will – after the first night – lead to an increased focus, energy, and concentration. Moreover, it will help the employees to make high quality and split-second decisions. In addition, increasing sleep quality will lead to a healthier appetite, an enhanced physical recovery, lower stress levels, and an improved immune function. Specifically, it will optimize, performance, health, and overall wellbeing.
Fb – Braintraining. “Hi Koos, I should be the one to say thank you! What a great workshop you gave, it resonated a lot with my current struggles! I hope to see you soon in a second session 😉 Best regards.” – AI Scientist Accenture
Fb Braintraining. “I loved it! It reminded me one more time about the concept “work smarter, not harder” and tips and tricks to better optimize my time. Any improvements? As the first webinar for us, it was generic enough. I would have loved to go deeper in some topics, but the time wouldn’t have allowed for it. So, no improvements needed! I’m interested in the follow-up. I believe it’s of added value for Accenture employees, we are continuously doing multi-tasking and have many more distractions: one or more clients, internal tasks, networking, selling, etc.” – AI engineer Accenture
Quote Jorrit van de Walle (CEO of Audittrail) “A good night’s sleep is extremely important. That’s what Koos of KM Human Factors Engineering made us clear with his workshop. The tips and special glasses have already boosted our night’s sleep and focus.
Brochure – Night Fit Work Hard Sleep Hard
Our latest clients
Military
High quality sleep between (night) shifts is essential for soldiers to ensure effective mental and physical recovery. This due to the fact that many of the major restorative functions in the body occur mostly and, in some cases, only during sleep. Examples of these restorative functions are: tissue repair, muscle growth, growth hormone release, and cleaning of the brain. High quality sleep is essential for soldiers to ensure optimal physical and mental recovery, and to perform safely during training and missions.
Fatigue
In general, fatigue can be defined as a feeling of tiredness and an inability to perform effectively. Although there are individual differences in how fatigue affects alertness and performance, nobody is immune from its effects. Compared to a soldier who is well rested, a highly fatigued soldier will be less alert, less able to mentally process information, will have slower reaction times, and less situation awareness. These factors combined lower job quality and increase the risk of errors, accidents and fatalities.
These reasons stress the need for optimal sleep, alertness and vigilance. Night Fit can help to improve the quality of sleep in stressful environments. Together with the Centre for Man and Aviation we conducted tests of Night Fit at the Air Operations and Control Station (Nieuw Milligen), the Force Protection (Volkel) and at the Royal Netherlands Air Force (Mali Africa).
– Erik – AME (Air Force)
“Interesting workshop, based on good research. There is a great amount of knowledge in the area of sleep and fatigue which has not yet reached the general audience. There is also much to learn about how to get the right information to the “customer i.e. the person that needs it the most”. Fatigue Management should be seen as improving performance and not as “sleeping in your own time”. Especially in aviation, the tools discussed in the workshop can be used to adjust circadian rhythms. Also, the tips and advice to improve sleeping patterns are of added value.
Sport professionals
Athletes need to obtain sufficient sleep of a high quality in order to reach maximal physical and mental performance. High quality of sleep is needed for your brain to fully reload and for your muscles to recover. Young athletes who sleep less than 8 hours have a 1.7 higher injury risk than those who sleep 8 hours or more.
Gegard: “I see progress so far, I fall asleep more quickly and I sleep longer. So far, I’m happy with the results. I’m looking forward to the second meeting”
Sleep enhancement benefits
Many things happen to the body of an athlete if the quality of sleep is improved from poor to moderate or from moderate to good. It will result in stronger immune functioning, faster metabolism, more balanced hormones, increased energy and a greater level of focus during training and matches. However, if an athlete does not sleep optimally, it may suffer the opposite of all those benefits.
In order optimize mental and physical recovery, we implemented Night Fit at various sports teams such as AZ Alkmaar, ADO Den Haag, KNVB O16, Bleekemolen and Van Lagen Racing.
“It has helped me to fall asleep faster and thereby wake up more fit.” – Lex Immers (ADO Den Haag)
“What stuck with me the most is that you need to have enough quality sleep in order to function at your full potential and thus be able to perform well. I keep using the glasses because I have the feeling that I feel fitter and I can get more out of myself on training and in competitions. “- Calvin (Ajax)