Sleep Deprivation's True Workplace Costs - Patrick J. Skerrett - Your Health at Work - Harvard Business Review

Performance and productivity, as measured by the Work Limitations Questionnaire, was significantly lower among workers with insomnia and other sleep trouble than they were among those who usually slept well. Writing in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the researchers estimated that lost productivity due to poor sleep cost $3,156 per employee with insomnia and averaged about $2,500 for those with less severe sleep problems. Across the four companies, sleep-related reductions in productivity cost $54 million a year. This doesn't include the cost of absenteeism--those with insomnia missed work an extra five days a year compared to good sleepers.

How well you sleep, or how poorly, is influenced by many factors: stress, health, work, travel, medications, alcohol, smoking, even weight. So many variables can make it a challenge to cope with trouble sleeping. Some people turn to prescription medications, others to over-the-counter sleep aids. An even larger number rely on alcohol. That's a faulty strategy. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but over the course of the night it actually interferes with sleep.

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