Insomnia is costing U.S. companies more than $63 billion a year, according to a new white paper that examines the toll that insufficient sleep takes on safety and productivity at work. Entitled Sick, Unsafe, and Unproductive: Poor Employee Sleep Is Bad for Business, the publication from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)  notes that sleep is a basic biological need, and getting less than seven hours of it a night (for the average person) can have serious detrimental consequences for an individuals’ long-term health, safety, and performance.

Training and development efforts that are informed by psychological research and theory and adapted to fit the needs of associates have resulted in Marriott International being recognized for having a Psychologically Healthy Workplace – an award given annually by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Workers who smoke can cost their employers thousands of dollars per year more than their non-­‐ smoking counterparts, new research has found. The study found smoking to pose a substantial burden on employers through increased costs from lost productivity. The US researches say it would be in an employer’s best interest to support smoking cessation programs that facilitate quitting among employees.

The modern open office was designed for team building and camaraderie but is mostly distinguished by its high noise levels, lack of privacy and surfeit of both digital and human distractions, according to an article in TIME magazine. And indeed, several decades of research have confirmed that open-plan offices are generally associated with greater employee stress, poorer co-worker relations and reduced satisfaction with the physical environment.

The obesity epidemic is costing employers money, through its effects on worker health and safety, but also due to its impact on health care costs, absenteeism and productivity. A new guide from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) is aimed at helping employers control the health and economic impact of obesity in the workplace – and some of its recommendations may be surprising.

Bullying is most often associated with children and teens, but adults can be victims and perpetrators as well. Workplace bullying is more common than most people realize, and it can have devastating consequences. Those who suffer the most and are most likely to be victims are workers and children with disabilities.

Employees with laboratory-confirmed influenza have more lost work time — including absences and reduced productivity while at work—compared to those with other types of acute respiratory illness (ARI), reports a study in the December Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "Compared to non-influenza ARI, [workers] with influenza lose an additional half-day of work due to absenteeism/presenteeism over the week following symptom onset."

Daniel Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist and the author of "This is Your Brain on Music," says listening to music while you work is likely to make you less productive. "You're having so much more fun," said Levitin, "that you feel more productive." He cited a growing body of research suggesting that, in almost every case, your performance on intellectual tasks (think reading or writing) suffers considerably when you listen to music.

A study by Simone Ritter at Radboud University in the Netherlands and Sam Ferguson, at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, looked at how listening to various types of music affected different types of thinking compared to working in silence. Their study found that happy music enhanced participants’ creative “divergent thinking.” However they found it had no impact on “convergent thinking,” which is problem-solving.