How does employee sleep affect productivity, errors and workplace safety? Practical steps for organisations on shift work, long hours and stress.
A specialist who can barely keep their eyes open in the morning meeting, an operator reading the same checklist for the third time in the last hours of the night shift, a manager who cannot fall asleep after answering work messages that arrived at midnight... In most organisations, sleep is seen as an employee's private matter. Yet employee sleep directly affects many business outcomes, from productivity and workplace safety to decision quality and relationships within the team. In this article, written for business owners, factory managers, HR and occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, I look at why sleep is an organisational issue, which working conditions disrupt it and what organisations can do.
Why Is Employee Sleep a Business Issue?
Sleep is the process through which the brain organises what it has learned during the day, processes emotional load and the body recovers. In a person who does not get enough good-quality sleep, attention, reaction time, decision-making, learning and emotion regulation are all affected. The person themselves does not always notice these effects; many people who are short of sleep perceive their performance to have dropped less than it actually has.
For the business, the consequence is this: a sleep-deprived employee is at work but cannot work at full capacity. This is called presenteeism. In the UK, the annual cost of poor employee mental health to employers has been calculated at £51 billion, with presenteeism, at roughly £24 billion, reported as the largest item (Deloitte, 2024). Because sleep problems are intertwined with mental health, they are an important part of this invisible loss.
In a survey carried out in Europe, general fatigue ranks first, at 37%, among the health problems caused or made worse by work (EU-OSHA, 2022). The fact that 66% of employees in Turkey say they spent a large part of the previous day under stress (Gallup, 2026) is also an important warning where sleep is concerned, because stress and sleeplessness form a cycle that feeds itself.
Signs of Sleep Deprivation at Work
Some signs that sleep problems have become widespread in a team are:
- More lapses in attention and more forgetfulness
- A marked drop in performance, especially in the afternoon and in the second half of the night shift
- Intolerance, quick irritability and tension within the team
- Absent-mindedness in meetings and difficulty following what is being said
- Frequent complaints of headaches, muscle pain and getting ill often
- A marked increase in caffeine and energy drink consumption
- More near misses or minor accidents
These signs on their own do not amount to a diagnosis of a sleep disorder; but if they are seen together and over a long period in a team, they may indicate that the way work is organised needs to be reviewed.
What Disrupts Employee Sleep?
Shift work and night work
The human body has a biological clock that works on the basis of being awake by day and asleep at night. Night shifts push against this rhythm; sleep taken during the day is often shorter and more fragmented. One review reported that productivity and safety can deteriorate at night, and that safety worsens over consecutive night shifts and with longer working hours (Folkard and Tucker, 2003). According to data reported from the same literature, in an 8-hour shift system the risk of accidents was found to be about 30% higher on the night shift than on the morning shift, and about 36% higher on the fourth consecutive night than on the first. These figures depend on the research context and cannot be transferred one-to-one to every workplace; even so, they show how important shift planning is for sleep and safety. I cover this subject in detail in the article on shift work, fatigue and workplace safety.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has also classified night shift work as "probably carcinogenic to humans" (Group 2A), noting that the evidence in humans is limited (IARC, 2020). This information is important not to frighten anyone but to remind us that night work needs to be treated seriously as both a health and an organisational matter.
Long working hours and overtime
According to the ILO's 2026 report, 35% of workers worldwide work more than 48 hours a week (ILO, 2026). Long hours directly shorten sleep. When long commutes and responsibilities at home are added, getting enough sleep can become almost impossible for many people working in big cities.
Communication outside working hours
Work messages and emails arriving in the evening take away both the time set aside for sleep and the mind's ability to switch off from work. Even a vague message such as "let's talk about this tomorrow morning" can keep a person's mind occupied all night. The article on after-hours messages offers more detail on this.
Work stress and burnout
Workload, job insecurity, conflict and pressure to hit targets can make the mind keep running non-stop once you lie down. A systematic review of 36 prospective studies found that burnout is linked later on to insomnia, depressive symptoms and absenteeism (Salvagioni et al., 2017). In other words, sleep problems can be both a result of stress and a harbinger of new problems.
Screen use and lifestyle habits
Staying in front of a screen until late at night, irregular mealtimes, caffeine in the evening and physical inactivity also impair sleep quality. Although some of these habits are individual, they are closely related to the space that the pace of work leaves.
Financial worries, second jobs and caring responsibilities
In periods when the cost of living is acutely felt, some employees may have to work second jobs in the evenings or at weekends. Night-time sleep is also often interrupted for employees who care for small children, older people or someone who is ill. These employees are often reluctant to voice their tiredness at work. If the organisation is aware of these realities, can talk about them without judgement and, where possible, considers arrangements such as flexible hours or shift preferences, it can ease the pressure on employee sleep to some extent.
Managers and decision-makers
Sleep problems affect not only employees on the shop floor but managers as well. Heavy responsibility, correspondence stretching late into the night and calls with partners in different time zones often cut managers' sleep short. A sleep-deprived manager struggles not only in their own decisions but also in the patience they show their team and the example they set. For this reason, it is important that an organisation's sleep work also covers the management level.
What Sleeplessness Costs the Organisation: Productivity and Safety
The impact of sleep problems on business outcomes can be summarised under a few headings:
- Errors and quality: Because sleep deprivation affects attention and memory, wrongly entered data, overlooked details and rework increase.
- Decision quality: Decisions managers make when tired can be more hasty and less flexible.
- Communication and team relationships: Patience wears thin in people who are short of sleep, and small disagreements can grow.
- Absenteeism: Long-term sleep problems can affect the immune system and general health, increasing sick leave.
- Workplace safety: In sectors such as manufacturing, logistics and construction, a momentary lapse in attention can lead to serious accidents. In 2025, 766,039 workplace accidents and 1,931 workplace-accident deaths were recorded in Turkey, with about 41% of accidents occurring in manufacturing (SGK, 2025). The causes of accidents are many-sided; fatigue and sleep deprivation are among the important human factors that need to be addressed.
Expecting high performance from a sleep-deprived team is like setting off on a long journey in a vehicle that is nearly out of fuel.
Sleep and Fatigue Within the Legal Framework
Article 4 of Turkey's Occupational Health and Safety Law No. 6331 obliges the employer to ensure employees' work-related health and safety and, when assigning tasks, to take into account whether the employee is fit for the job in terms of health and safety. Article 5 of the law requires preventing the negative effects of monotonous work and production pace, and developing a prevention policy covering factors related to work organisation. Article 15 provides for health surveillance according to the risks employees are exposed to. Fatigue arising from shift patterns and long overtime can be assessed within the psychosocial and ergonomic sources of hazard mentioned in Article 8 of the Risk Assessment Regulation. Article 10 of the law also requires that groups needing special policies, such as young and older workers and pregnant and breastfeeding employees, be taken into account in risk assessment; for these groups, night work and sleep patterns are of particular importance.
How Can Organisations Support Employee Sleep?
1. Review shift planning. Where possible, limit the number of consecutive night shifts, plan shift rotation in a forward direction (morning, evening, then night) and leave enough rest time between shifts. Announcing shift schedules in advance makes it easier for employees to plan their sleep and family life.
2. Time risky tasks carefully. Where possible, do not leave maintenance, mould changes or hazardous work that demands high attention to the last hours of the night shift.
3. Protect breaks. Make sure that regular breaks are actually given in practice, especially on the night shift. Creating short rest areas where conditions allow can reduce fatigue.
4. Monitor overtime. Track whether overtime is concentrated among particular people. An employee who works overtime constantly is at risk where sleep is concerned.
5. Set a rule for after-hours communication. Encourage people not to send non-urgent messages in the evening and at night, or to leave them until the next morning using scheduled sending.
6. Train managers. It is valuable for safety that foremen and supervisors can notice an employee who looks extremely tired, talk to them and, if necessary, change their duties.
7. Provide sleep awareness training. Run short, practical sessions on topics such as sleep hygiene, getting to sleep after a shift, caffeine and screen use, and making use of daylight. These sessions should be offered alongside organisational changes, not instead of them. Group-specific content, such as practical tips for protecting daytime sleep for shift workers (blackout curtains, silencing the phone, talking to family members about sleeping hours) and evening wind-down habits for office workers, gives a more realistic and workable level of awareness about employee sleep.
8. Make routes to support visible. Make clear how employees who experience long-lasting insomnia, anxiety or symptoms of depression can reach the workplace physician and mental health professionals. Cognitive-behavioural approaches are often used for long-term insomnia; whether medication is needed requires a physician's assessment. For individual suggestions, take a look at the article on how to overcome insomnia.
Imagine that in a three-shift plastic injection factory it is noticed that errors and near-miss reports have risen on the night shift. Making the shift rotation forward-moving, reducing the number of consecutive nights, moving critical mould changes into the first half of the night shift and training supervisors to recognise signs of fatigue could be changes to consider together.
How to Get Started in Your Organisation
1. Needs analysis: Using a short, confidential survey, ask about employees' sleep duration, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and fatigue levels, and how often they receive communication outside working hours. Examine shift schedules, overtime records, and error, near-miss and accident data in the same table. Include the findings in the psychosocial risk assessment. Reporting employee sleep data at team and shift level rather than individually protects confidentiality and makes it easier for employees to answer honestly.
2. Programme: Based on the results of the analysis, shift and working-time arrangements, manager training, sleep and stress management workshops for employees and individual support for those who need it can be planned together. You can look at training and needs analysis options suited to your organisation on the corporate services page.
3. Measurement: Repeat the same survey three and six months after the changes, and track the change in absenteeism, error and near-miss data. Sharing the results with employees shows that the process is sincere and increases participation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is employees' sleep the employer's responsibility?
Sleep habits are personal; but many of the factors that determine sleep, such as shift patterns, working hours and communication outside working hours, are under the employer's control. Occupational health and safety legislation also requires the prevention of risks arising from work organisation. For this reason, the employer has an important role to play in establishing a working pattern that supports sleep.
Should a short nap break be allowed on the night shift?
In some workplaces, controlled short rest breaks are used to reduce fatigue. It is important that this is planned safely, that the time it takes to return to full alertness after the break is taken into account and that it is assessed together with the workplace physician.
When does sleeplessness need professional support?
If the sleep problem occurs several nights a week, lasts longer than a few weeks and affects functioning during the day, it can help to consult a specialist. If intense anxiety, hopelessness or thoughts of self-harm accompany it, support should be sought without delay, and in an emergency 112 (emergency services) should be called.
Are caffeine and energy drinks a solution for fatigue?
Caffeine can provide short-term alertness, but it does not remove the need for sleep. If consumed close to the end of a shift, it can disrupt the sleep that follows. From the organisation's point of view, the real solution is to address the working pattern that is the source of the fatigue.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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