New Study Links $31
Billion in Workplace Errors to Insomnia
Every Monday morning, I watch people shuffle in with that
familiar sleepy glaze in their eye.
We’ve all had it happen once in a while where you come to work and you’re
still sleepy from the night before. With
the rising summer temperatures, excessive noise from neighbors, and a host of
other irritants, sometimes sleep is elusive.
We all show up to work because we want to get paid, but sometimes, it
appears it would have paid to stay home instead.
A new study by Harvard’s Medical School in Boston concludes
that insomnia is responsible for approximately 274,000 workplace accidents per
year at the cost of an extra $31 billion.
In 2008 and 2009, researchers interviewed over 10,000 people to
determine how sleeplessness affects their job performance.
Is it Cheaper to
Treat Employees for Insomnia
If workplace errors and accidents cost roughly $31 billion
extra, would it behoove employers to pay to treat workers’ insomnia instead?
"You can feed them sleeping tablets -- this works in
the short term -- but then it goes bad, creating drug-dependent patients who
get little benefit from their drugs," said Kevin Morgan, director of
Loughborough University's Clinical Sleep Research Unit, in Leicestershire,
England. "Ironically, you then have
to invest in withdrawal programs to get them off drugs, only to find that the
insomnia -- which was there all the time -- returns."
A more effective and longer lasting treatment could be
cognitive behavioral therapy, which Morgan estimates works 60 to 70% of the
time. But until employers are willing to
invest in new therapeutic treatments, they may want to invest in some simple
solutions such as appropriate signage, safety gear, and training classes.
If You’ve Suffered a
Workplace Accident
If you’ve suffered a workplace accident, you should first
and foremost, get checked out by a physician. You may have serious or long
lasting injuries which could potentially get worse if you neglect to check it
out.
If this workplace accident was the result of someone else’s
negligence or carelessness, whether they suffered from insomnia or not, you may
want to talk to an attorney.