Sleepless Over Safety: The Hidden Toll of Workplace Incidents and How to Address It

July 22, 2025

“When incidents keep happening because the setup never changes or the controls are outdated, the pressure builds,” says James Smith CEO of A-Safe.

Safety leadership in industrial settings is demanding by nature. For many professionals in this field, the responsibility does not end with the shift. Even when everything seems in order, incidents—near misses, disrupted workflows and equipment concerns—remain front of mind.

That persistent concern, to health and safety managers often invisible to others, carries consequences beyond operations. It affects well-being, mental clarity, and the ability to rest outside of the working environment.

When incidents keep happening because the setup never changes or the controls are outdated, the pressure builds. It is not only compliance at stake, but confidence, and that carries a cost.

The link between near misses and mental fatigue

Each late-night alert, medical response, or shift disruption adds to a growing mental burden. These moments contribute to operational strain but also erode trust across teams. In 2023, the American workplace experienced over 4,500 preventable injury-related deaths and over 4 million medically consulted injuries, according to the National Safety Council (NSC).

But the victims of these accidents are not just those who get injured. These events also affect those directly responsible for preventing them. Continuous stress from the fear of overlooking a risk can result in chronic fatigue.

Decision-makers become hyper-alert, and confidence in their safety infrastructure starts to falter. For example, if equipment is hard to reconfigure or cannot adapt to layout changes, the burden only grows.

The mental toll is rarely accounted for in traditional risk assessments. It does not show up in standard metrics, yet the mentality of constant risk anticipation shapes decisions on the ground every day—whether that is delaying maintenance to avoid blame or halting operations out of uncertainty.

Health and safety leaders must move beyond reactive approaches with tools that reduce guesswork and restore visibility and flexibility.

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