Research pick: COVID’s effects on control room operators - "The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological fatigue of control room operators in oil, gas and petrochemical industry"

Critical workers across many different sectors and industries from healthcare and education to manufacturing and retail have faced tough times during the many months of the COVID-19 pandemic. New research in the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics, considers the plight of control room operators in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry and the psychological fatigue many such workers have faced during the pandemic.

Budiyanto Soinangun, Ivan Novendri, Jaka Matsana, Fergyanto E. Gunawan, Muhammad Asrol, and A.A.N. Perwira Redi of the Industrial Engineering Department at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, Indonesia, explain how within the petrochemical industry sites have to be kept running continuously and so rely on employees working shifts. However, the emergence of a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, in late 2019, and the pandemic that arose, meant measures such as social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines, and self-isolation had to be instigated in many parts of the world to slow the spread of the disease. There were significant problems as a result for many sectors, particularly those industries which must be “always-on”.

The team recognised that in such an industry the pandemic may well have serious psychological effects on its workers. As such, they undertook research to measure sleep quality and quantity, cognitive performance, and fatigue incidents among petrochemical workers and associated accidents.

The results show that many control room operators got less sleep during the pandemic and the sleep they experienced was of a lower quality than before COVID-19. The researchers also found that cognitive performance was lower as indicated by an almost 15% increase in the number of alarms triggered on average than prior to the pandemic. Companies that adapted to the so-called “new normal” of the pandemic world saw a gradual fall in the number of incidents and accidents over time, however, as they implemented new control and monitoring measures.

As to the psychological wellbeing of workers, there is a need to implement new measures for them too. Measures that monitor well-being as well as offering counselling with an expert independent third party would improve the situation for over-stressed workers suffering from poor sleep and mental health problems. In addition, companies should offer their workers access to physical exercise equipment, the team suggests.

Soinangun, B., Novendri, I., Matsana, J., Gunawan, F.E., Asrol, M. and Redi, A.A.N.P. (2021) ‘The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological fatigue of control room operators in oil, gas and petrochemical industry’, Int. J. Human Factors and Ergonomics, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.393–407.