The Cost of Workplace Fatigue

Last week, in Seattle, the National Safety Council put on their first Workplace Fatigue Conference, aimed at bringing fatigue experts and corporations together to solve the nation’s fatigue problem.

And no, it’s not overstating the case to say we have a fatigue problem. The costs we pay for being sleep deprived are staggering, here’s a look:

• Untreated sleep disorders cost up to $3500/employee
• Direct costs $14B, indirect costs $28B
• Employees sleeping only 6-7 hours nightly cost employers 3.7 days of lost work
• Costs come from absenteeism, presenteeism, accidents, injuries and healthcare

A large employer here in my hometown, Seattle, is Amazon. I put their data into the NSC Fatigue Cost Calculator *. Here’s the findings:

• Fatigue is costing Amazon $47,393,505 per year
• $6.2M in absent employees
• $27.8M in decreased productivity
• And $13.3M in increased health care costs

But this is not the true total cost. There are additional costs resulting from the way sleep deprivation impairs positive human interactions. When sleep deprived, leaders are more abusive and unable to see sleep deprivation in their employees, employees in turn are less satisfied with their jobs, leading to costly employee turnover. There are many other ways that sleep deprivation and sleep disorders raise costs on corporations.

I encourage you to complete the Fatigue Cost Calculator for your own corporation, then take steps by training employees on sleep health, and designing your shift schedule and other safety practices to decrease fatigue. And decrease costs will follow.

 

NSC Fatigue Cost Calculator

*(Assumptions were: 24,000 employees in Washington, computing sector, no shift work. Though of course we know that these employees do work long and sometimes irregular hours).

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