Not getting a good night’s sleep could be seriously affecting your productivity and safety in the workplace.
A study of 97,000 employees in 139 countries by GCC Insights has found that sleep deficiency is a serious risk to employee performance and health. The sectors hit hardest were administration, legal and accounting.
Dr Stuart F Quan, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School said: “When employees are fatigued at work, their motivation, mood and focus are impaired alongside higher-level cognitive functions.”
The biggest factors in stealing sleep were poor psychological health, irregular work hours and personal obligations.
Increased connectivity to the workplace was also a factor, with digitally connected employees twice as likely to sleep less than six hours compared to those that work offline.
The report highlighted the importance of employers recognising that a lack of sleep could be emblematic of further health problems.
Dr David Batman, GCC’s chief medical officer said: “It is widely accepted amongst clinicians that employees who are stressed, anxious or depressed are more vulnerable to insomnia. They have less energy and more fatigue.”
Speaking exclusively to Changeboard about how a wake-up call lead to her changing her relationship with sleep, Arianna Huffington highlighted the need to fight against a culture of sleep deprivation.
She said: “Not only is there no tradeoff between living a well-rounded and high performance, performance is actually improved when we include time for renewal.
“Glamourising sleep deprivation is deeply embedded in our culture. Everywhere you turn, it’s celebrated from “you snooze, you lose” to “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.””