Author : admin | Monday, 29 April 2019
Author : admin | Monday, 29 April 2019
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
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