Research shows that two-thirds of adults sleep below the recommended 7–8 hours per night, losing 41 minutes of sleep, on average, per weeknight[i]. Often, this can be because of the burden of overworking or general job-related worries, and when the weekend arrives, workers are 5 hours behind the amount of sleep needed in order to fully function.
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This leads to oversleeping on the weekend in an attempt to pay back a “sleep debt” that cannot, it turns out, actually be repaid—it just doesn’t work like that. Tiredness builds, so the effects of sleep deprivation have long since kicked in by the time it gets to that lazy Sunday morning. A recent campaign by Furniture Village highlighted that all this time spent snoozing late on the weekend (which doesn’t actually help us during the week at all), leads to people losing 2 years of life to their sleeping habits that don’t technically do anything to help them feel less tired overall. So, we’re still suffering the short-term and long-term detriments of sleep deprivation for the most part and losing all that time on the weekend for nothing.
Why Sleep Is an Important Issue for Employers
In the short term, lack of sleep can affect day to day abilities, from moods to cognitive function, including concentration, creativity, problem-solving skills, and overall productivity. In the long term, this can pose more serious issues for our health, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. As an employer, this is obviously bad news for both you and your staff—even if employees aren’t flat out exhausted, just a small amount of ongoing sleep deprivation could seriously hinder their productivity, motivation, and performance. And if they are flat out exhausted over a long period of time, there’s a serious risk they could be taking time off due to poor health.
The answer, according to the experts, is to reset attitudes to sleep during the week. With that in mind, this sleep debt calculator has been created to allow people to work out their own personal sleep debt. The handy tool also shows how people could spend all the time lost to weekend lie-ins, alongside offering expert advice on how to achieve that all important healthy sleep routine. However, that’s easier said than done with the modern-day pressures that come with the world of work.
So, here’s how, as an employer, you can help ensure your employees are getting enough sleep, in turn, improving their well-being and giving your business the best possible chance of success.
Flextime
Flextime is most commonly associated with achieving better work/life balance. What is less recognized, is that each individual’s biological internal clock—or circadian rhythm, differs, causing some people to work better early on, with others finding benefits in waking a bit later. Providing this leeway will allow your employees to get enough sleep and wake up a time that doesn’t feel unnatural to them. Some may, for example, choose sleep later in the mornings and come it at 10:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 a.m., while early birds might prefer to hit the office at 8:00 a.m.
Promote 1-Hour Lunch Breaks
With the business of day-to-day business, client meetings, and looming deadlines, it can be easy to skip lunch in order to keep schedules on track. However, lunch provides employees with vital fuel that they need to get through the day, as well as to provide essential nutrients that will promote sleep later on. Additionally, missing lunch could lead to unhealthy snacking and bingeing throughout the day, encouraging a high sugar or carbohydrate diet, linked to sugar imbalances that can affect circadian hormones and quality of sleep.
DiscourageLate Working Hours
In a world where phones, devices, and laptops mean workers aren’t forced to switch off from work, it’s important to take away this pressure. Promoting or praising a culture of late workers not only means employees will fail to unwind, but constant exposure to the blue light emitted by screens can be detrimental to sleep. It suppresses the release of melatonin—an important messenger in the initiation of sleep. One way to tackle this is to consider putting a rule in place that does not permit working after a certain hour.
For more expert advice on how to tackle the issue of sleep within the workplace or in any other place, visit The 24 hour sleep guide here.
[i] https://www.sleepcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/The-Great-British-Bedtime-Report.pdf