Should older workers do night shifts? Age v safety risks
I work in a hospital. Like many doctors of my generation, I spent decades participating in evening shifts, nightly on-call rosters, and emergency callbacks. Although I am committed to contributing fairly to patient care and service, I have found that working after hours has become increasingly burdensome over the past few years.
I am aware that emergency departments and hospitals are under increasing pressure, making staffing flexibility difficult. Likewise, workforce retention may also depend on creating sustainable arrangements for experienced clinicians.
Should workplaces in 24/7 industries offer age-related discounts on after-hours duties, or should staff equity require everyone to continue participating equally regardless of age unless there is a specific health exemption?
Hospital work was challenging at the best of times. I can only imagine how much pressure would increase if you were asked to work outside of ‘typical’ working hours, possibly affected by disrupted sleep. “Taxation” seems like an understatement.
My first instinct after reading your email was that yes, age should definitely be a consideration for hospital administrators. But I have no experience in this field, so I don’t want you to take my uneducated opinions as gospel. Dr. is a lecturer and assistant professor of management at the University of Canberra. I asked Hongbo Guo for his expert opinion.
His response was detailed and I sent you everything he mentioned. What I think might be most useful to a wider audience is what it tells me about the two competing arguments your question raises. First, it is informed by what Dr Guo describes as the “logic of formal equality”.
“Under this logic, justice is uniformity. All doctors should equally participate in night shifts, night on-call staffing and emergency callbacks unless they have a formal exemption,” Dr Guo said.
“It has intuitive appeal because it seems like a neutral management logic, seemingly avoiding preferential treatment. The most relevant framework is the anti-discrimination laws we have in Australia, particularly the Age Discrimination Act 2004 and state/territory anti-discrimination legislation. The Age Discrimination Act makes it illegal to treat a person unfairly because of their age or age group in areas of public life, which of course includes employment.”
Dr Guo said the official equality framework led to the argument that there should be no blanket discounts based on age. From where? Because a policy that makes it clear that hospitals consider doctors over 50 to be too old for night shifts could be an illegal stereotype.
The second argument uses “risk equity logic”, which is based more on occupational health and safety (WHS) law, risk management and occupational health literature. He considers fairness as “the safe and proportionate distribution of a known danger.”
“Is fatigue a recognized WHS risk? It certainly is. Safe Work Australia’s 2025 Fatigue Code of Practice clearly addresses fatigue as a WHS risk that must be eliminated or minimized to the extent reasonably practicable. Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, staffing is part of the system of work.”
It is important that organizations do not assume that all older workers are less capable of working the night shift than their younger colleagues.
Dr Guo said that if we look at your question from a risk equity perspective, we are not just talking about a personal preference to avoid working at night. There is significant evidence to suggest that age may indeed be associated with sleep, recovery, health, medication, clinical performance, and even commuting safety.
So your claim that night shifts have become more demanding is entirely reasonable and, according to Dr Guo, should be treated by management as “a fatigue risk signal that requires an appropriate risk assessment”.
However, this isn’t necessarily your colleagues’ experience, he said, and Dr. Guo said it’s important for organizations not to assume that all older workers are less capable of taking night shifts than their younger counterparts. All things considered, this doesn’t really solve the health and safety issue.
“The rationale for equality of risk is whether the organization actually controls the safety hazard; by allowing junior doctors to spend more unsafe nights, the danger of total fatigue has been carried from one group to another.”
Which logic wins? Dr Guo says it would be imprudent to put one before the other; He even suggested that in cases like yours the two should be read together.
“Formal equality reminds us not to stereotype based on age. On the other hand, risk equality reminds us not to ignore age, not to hide behind equal treatment when the same staffing load creates unequal security risks,” he says.
Jonathan Rivett is a writer living in Melbourne. He’s been writing about workplace culture and careers for more than a decade.
