By GSU staff rep Brian Lark

Time away from work to a lot of people means one thing: more work waiting for them when they get back.

Take this time to remember that when coming back to work from a break – whether it is from a planned vacation or a leave of absence – we all want to get caught up. This often motivates a worker to rush their work, to excessively multi-task, or to take on longer hours just to feel that they’re not behind. However, these actions increase your risk of having a workplace incident.

Those longer hours lead to fatigue, and those rushed tasks and the distraction that comes from doing do too many things at once are major contributors to incidents in the workplace. Many judgement errors causing bodily harm and equipment failure can be avoided by taking time to slow down and keep your mind on task. Other incidents include mental health stresses from feeling overwhelmed by the workload that you have come back to. We need to take care to protect our mental health just as much as we do our body.

Remind yourself that  the work will be there tomorrow. You can’t do a week’s work in a day, and we are fools to try.

If you have concerns about your health and safety in the workplace, don’t hesitate to contact Brian Lark or one of our other GSU staff reps.