It's midnight at a Motorola factory complex in Plantation, Fla., but it's not just the assembly lines that are still humming.
At tax time, workers get help with their forms. Around Halloween, they're setting up for a costume party. Almost any night, employees are exercising in the fitness center.Motorola and other companies nationwide are starting to wake up to the work-life needs of shift workers, the often-invisible employees who do crucial jobs while battling the stress of toiling at night.
Amid a tight labor market and a global economy, employers find they must do more to attract workers to unpopular shifts. Bosses are also realizing that doing a good job means having one's outside life in order -- perhaps even more so for night workers. Sometimes, an accident jolts a company into action.
"The problems of night work have been around since the electric light bulb," said Ed Coburn, publisher of Working Nights, a monthly newsletter based in Cambridge, Mass.
"Management is really just becoming aware of the fact that there's something they can do and there's something they should be doing," he said.
Most Americans work during the day, but increasing numbers are going to the office or factory at night as the 24-hour economy takes hold.
About 8 percent of the country's 90 million full-time workers clock in regularly in the evening or night, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An additional 7 percent sometimes work a shift that involves evening or nights.
Such hours of work change people's lives, researchers stress. Getting enough sleep is a challenge, as is staying healthy. Just driving home after a night's work can be dangerous, and asking a payroll question may mean staying up after work and losing needed sleep.
That's why Sony's Technology Center in Mount Pleasant, Pa., began stationing human resources representatives at the factory at odd hours: either 1 a.m. to 8 a.m. or 4 a.m. to noon, said Lou Ann Walters, manager of human resources.
"They're our lifeline," she said of the night shift. "So we have brought more and more support functions in to help."
Mark Werderber, a factory supervisor who worked nights for more than two years, said the change has been noticed. "People in the early days would say, 'Why can't we speak to HR at night?,' " he said.
Other companies are beginning to hold nocturnal training sessions, since daytime schooling "is like asking me to come in for a 3 a.m. meeting," said Marnie Barnhart, director of human resources for The John Roberts Co., a family-run commercial printer.
Two years ago, the company in Coon Rapids, Minn., switched its shift work training to nights, hiring instructors exclusively from a local community college since they were willing to come in around the clock.
Helping shift workers balance their lives may mean building a napping room to give sleepy workers a chance to snooze before they drive home.
"When I first got here three years ago, it was all potato chips," said Carol Anderson, a human resources representative at Equilon Enterprises' refinery in Martinez, Calif.
Still, despite her efforts to improve the vending machine selection, workers bring pizzas and burritos. "Their mindset is, 'I'm working all night, at least I'm going to eat what I want,"' she sighs.
Motorola's cafeteria in Plantation, Fla., is open all night, and the company just began keeping its fitness center open until midnight, from 9 p.m. The center opens at 5 a.m.
"At one point we were very minimal in those services," said Linda Drake, manager of strategic programs for the 3,000-employee complex. But amid the labor shortage, "we want to attract the best and keep the best on those shifts."
Still, even companies that are improving shift workers' work-life balance aren't doing enough, said Coburn. A few companies subsidize 24-hour child care centers, yet when he surveyed 350 24-hour workplaces last year, most did nothing to help shift workers with day care.
Companies still don't realize how crucial work-life balance is for making shift work successful, he said.
"You can design a great schedule. You can make the work environment as alert-enhancing as possible," he said. "But if the employees don't eat properly, sleep properly, arrange their personal lives, then everything the company does is a non-starter."