Workers suffering from fatigue—physical and mental—are not only less productive and more prone to illness but also more distracted and thus more likely to be involved in a safety incident.

Fatigue can be broadly defined as a feeling of weariness, tiredness or lack of energy. Fatigue is a common complaint but, medically speaking, it’s recognized more as a symptom or cause of other conditions than as a condition itself.

In this report you will find:

Everyone should be concerned about the impact of fatigue as it can be considered a form of impairment, making fatigue a workplace hazard. However, fatigue levels are not easily measured or quantified; therefore, it is difficult to isolate the effect of fatigue on incident and injury rates.

Occupational fatigue is a frightening yet mostly overlooked health condition that affects a majority of the labor force in North America. Because of the lack of awareness, people tend to misunderstand it as a normal part of working and underestimate it. But, there’s more to workplace fatigue than just being tired.

To give you a better understanding of what occupational fatigue is and its effects, here are some statistics we compiled that we feel every modern worker today needs to be aware of.

As safety coordinator, you need to be aware of the dangers of workplace fatigue and warn company management to consider the economic impact of driving workers too hard. But you’ll need solid evidence to support your argument. There are 2 studies published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) you can use: One is on the relationship between fatigue and health-related lost productive time and the other links weekly work schedules of 60 or more hours to health and safety problems.