Atypical Schedules: How to Prevent Health Risks

What does working atypical schedules actually look like? What are the possible consequences for workers' health? What solutions can help limit that impact? And how can HR software help manage atypical schedules well? To answer these questions, we spoke with Guillaume Lapierre, HRIS Project Director at SIGMA-HR.

What Counts as Atypical Scheduling?

Atypical Schedules: A Definition

"Atypical schedules" covers the different work arrangements that fall outside the "standard" pattern (five days a week, Monday to Friday, daytime hours, with Saturday and Sunday off together). Working atypical schedules means working, in whole or in part, under arrangements such as:

• Evenings
• Nights (between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.)
• Saturdays, Sundays, statutory holidays
• Irregular or cyclical hours that vary week to week (3x8, 2x12 rotations)
• Split shifts
• Rotating shift work (successive alternating teams)
• And other similar arrangements

Who Works Atypical Schedules?

Certain sectors rely heavily on atypical scheduling — accommodation and food services, retail, transportation and warehousing, agriculture, public administration, manufacturing, healthcare, and security, among others. In France, a Dares study on atypical schedules found that 45% of employees worked at least once under atypical hours over a four-week period in 2021. Employees on atypical schedules also tend to work longer hours overall — more hours and days worked per year, and longer workdays — compared with those on standard schedules alone.

An INSEE survey on employment, unemployment, and labour income adds more detail on how atypical work is organized: in 2022, 37% of French employees worked at least one Saturday over the four weeks preceding the survey — the most common form of atypical scheduling, ahead of evening work (8 p.m. to midnight), week-to-week variable schedules, Sunday work, and night work.

Shifted Schedules: What Are the Health Risks?

The Mental Health Impact of Atypical Schedules

From a mental health standpoint, atypical schedules can trigger anxiety and mood disorders. "That's what the risk assessments carried out by our clients consistently show," notes Guillaume Lapierre, Director of Professional Services at SIGMA-HR. "Working atypical schedules also carries psychological risks, because it creates a gap between the worker's rhythm of life and that of the people around them."

The Physical Health Impact of Atypical Schedules

Atypical scheduling disrupts the body's internal clock and biological rhythms, particularly sleep. Accident risk rises too, whether on the job or during the commute.

And the risks don't stop there. Night work is the type of atypical schedule most likely to harm workers' health. It has been classified as probably carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), with an increased risk of breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer. Cardiovascular problems and metabolic and digestive disorders are also cited as possible consequences for workers on atypical schedules.

What Solutions Can Reduce the Impact of Atypical Schedules?

Putting Work Arrangement Measures in Place

To reduce the risks tied to atypical schedules, employers can put prevention measures and workstation adaptations in place. Some examples:

• Increase the number of days off.
• Build in rest periods longer than work periods (for example, 3 days on / 4 days off).
• Make shift swaps easier between employees through automated schedule planning.
• Diversify tasks and break up work cycles to reduce the monotony that can build up over long shifts.
• Work with night workers' internal clocks by exposing them to low-intensity blue-green light to help them feel more alert — and block light on the way home with special glasses.
• Allow short naps on-site.

Measuring and Reducing Exposure to Risk Factors

Requiring employers to formally assess occupational risks is a relatively recent addition to Canadian law, and exposure to occupational hazards doesn't, on its own, create new statutory rights for employees here. France takes a notably different approach: its Labour Code (Articles L4121-1 to L4121-5) spells out employer obligations around workers' physical and mental health and safety, and French companies must actively track employees' exposure to specific risk factors such as night work, rotating shift work, or repetitive tasks (Article L4161-1). Employees who exceed the legal exposure thresholds accumulate points in France's Personal Prevention Account (C2P).

"In Canada, employees are only lightly involved in the risk assessment process itself. In France, employees are genuine participants — they have access to a great deal of information," observes Guillaume Lapierre.

Concretely, French labour law places several obligations on employers:

• Identify occupational risks, including those governed by the Personal Prevention Account.
• Calculate and track employees' exposure time and thresholds for hardship factors (tracked annually) — atypical schedules are one of them.
• Report employees whose exposure exceeds the thresholds to the Personal Prevention Account.

Simplifying Atypical Schedule Tracking and Risk-Factor Exposure with an HRIS

Assessing occupational risks and calculating exposure time for hardship factors are long-running processes that can feel complex. Using an OHS suite centralizes all of this work and lets you:

• Automatically calculate hours worked on atypical schedules through the time-management module, simplify exposure-time calculations for each employee, and track threshold overruns.
• Track employee exposure to hazardous conditions — useful for managers, HR teams, and employees themselves, who can access their own data (what am I exposed to, what are the thresholds, and so on).
• Make occupational risk assessment easier by adapting to each client's context and drawing on their own expertise.
• Simplify reporting exposure data (hours worked, exposure volume against thresholds) where a jurisdiction requires it.

A Few References on Atypical Schedules and Risk Prevention

• Federal labour standards (Canada Labour Code, Part III)
• Quebec's Act respecting labour standards

To go further:

• La Ligue de l'Enseignement Simplifies HR Management with SIGMA-HR
• 5 Most Time-Consuming HR Tasks
• Grievance, Agreements, and Disciplinary Measures
• AI and Human Skills: The Role of HR in Organizations
• Workaholism: When Work Becomes an Addiction