A bad night's sleep, or a night with no enough sleep, may not just cause weight gain, it can actually kill you, or leave you badly injured. A Harvard Medical School study — one of many on the subject — found that insomnia is the cause of 274,000 workplace accidents and errors each year, costing companies billions.

That this is the case is rarely surprising. According to the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 38 percent of American workers get not as much as the doctor-recommended seven hours of sleep a night. It makes sense, given the pressure-packed lifestyle of many Americans — long commuting times, overtime at work, night shifts, moonlighting, and plain old family pressures.

But, workers' sleep troubles are employers' sleep problems — specifically for workers in the manufacturing sector. In line with the National Safety Council, 63 percent of workers in the manufacturing sector reported feeling tired at work, while an astonishing 55 percent of employers stated finding workers asleep on the job. In the meantime, 73 percent of employers in the manufacturing sector report that fatigue causes decreases in productivity, and 44 percent said weakness was a factor in injuries on the job. Overall, 13 percent of all workplace injuries can be attributed to fatigue, the study said.

Those injuries, according to the Harvard study, cost companies as high as $31 billion a year. But those are just the “direct” costs of dealing with injuries; it doesn't take into account productivity costs due to “presenteeism,” where workers show, but are too tired to do their job productively.

A 2018 Japanese study shows that while companies, on average, lost $520 per employee per year, they had an annual loss of $3,055 due to presenteeism. That study included losses from employees suffering from health problems, but it goes to show just how extensive the hidden costs of non- or lower-productive employees can be, and that is just as relevant for losses because of workers who don't sleep enough.

If deficiency of sleep is as much a problem for employers as it is for workers, it stands to reason that employers will need to implement policies that encourage workers to have a good night's sleep. There are several things they can do:

According to the National Safety Council, there are numerous risk factors on the job that encourage weakness. Among them: shift work, particularly overnight/rotating or irregular shifts; overtime, where workers spend more than 50 hours a week on the job; long shifts; specially physically demanding work; and long commutes.

A lot of employees—and employers—report being the subject of not less than one of these risk factors, and many are subjected to two. “While a conclusion cannot be drawn in a definable fashion that two or more risk factors multiply risk, it is common sense that the more risk factors individuals have, the higher the probability that their work quality, productivity and safety will be affected,” the Council said, adding more that when possible, employers can and should “look for ways to design working days to lessen the number of concurrent fatigue risks. When concurrent fatigue risks are unavoidable, employees should be given additional recovery time.”

Alleviating risk factors, however, doesn't constantly work. If an employee lives an hour's drive away from the facility, there's little the company can do to change that. Yet, organizations do need to ensure that that their employees are getting a good night's sleep. If danger factors cannot be eliminated, most likely they can be reduced. As a result, an organization provide lodging for employees who work late for the occasional times they can't leave because of a problem or an emergency. Organizations can also structure work schedules to produce consistent hours for workers, enabling them to work set hours, ensuring that their circadian rhythms are balanced.

Companies can also reach out and provide credits for employees to get the seven hours of sleep scientists say they need. Sleep can be “gamified,” using apps and contests that provide perks for workers who “win” by getting a good night's sleep.

Organizations should also inspire the use of technology to enhance sleep. As a holiday gift, like for example, companies can provide employees with a wearable sleep headband, noise-masking sleepbuds, or other sensor or technology-based device that increases sleep.

An employee who loses a finger on the production line, a worker who, owing to fatigue, misses an important step in the production process—the direct losses mount up, resulting to increased health care costs and lost money and time as a result of poor quality production. Then, there are the “affiliated” costs, like the lawsuits from customers who didn't get their merchandise on time, the civil lawsuit by the injured employee, and the eventual loss of customers and talent. These are problem scenarios, and sleep disorders can be a serious factor in all of them. Companies need to defend themselves, and they can do so by helping their workers sleep better.

This article is originally posted on manufacturing.net