Having high quality sleep is important for both physical health and mental wellbeing, but around 1 in 5 people are not having enough sleep each night. In this article we look at the importance of sleep from both an employer and employee perspective. It’s something that often doesn’t get the focus it should – but a good night’s sleep carries so many benefits to both mental wellbeing and physical health.
Sleep and emotional regulation are often affected by the demands of modern society, such as shift work or working long hours, with many sacrificing sleep to maximise their output at work. Supporting healthy sleep habits can help reduce the negative consequences of sleep deprivation and, in turn, reduce absence and improve workplace productivity.
The benefits of sleep
The benefits of having a good night’s rest are substantial, it improves cognitive function, job performance, creativity, boosts mood regulation and therefore decreases anxiety, depression and mood swings. Having the correct amount of sleep also improves cardiovascular health due to sleep helping to lower blood pressure and heart health, it also helps to maintain metabolism rates and lowers the chances of developing a chronic illness. Adults up to the age of 64 are meant to get 7-9 hours of sleep each night but around 37% of adults in the UK believe work impacts their control over their sleep.
Effects from lack of sleep
Poor sleep affects our ability to regulate our emotions easily, lower our starting energy levels and reduce concentration. Consistent poor sleep not only affects work life balance and productivity but also our social lives, immune systems and relationships.
Sleep deprivation has been associated with poor mood which then creates a vicious cycle since poor mood then later disrupts sleep. In the UK alone, 66% of adults/adolescents say that poor sleep is negatively affecting their mental health. People who suffer from a lack of sleep will often show these signs:
- Poor focus, memory or concentration.
- They are more likely to consume a high amount of caffeine through coffee, energy drinks or high sugar drinks.
- They are more likely to take part in risky behaviour.
- More likely to have a poorer immune system.
- Less able to easily manage stress in their lives.
- Headaches
- Increased symptoms of pre-existing mental health conditions.
Having consistent poor sleep can increase absence rates due to overworking or operating on little sleep and has a higher chance of decreasing workplace morale and work ethics. It can also create built up resentment, burn out and increase staff turnover. These issues could easily be improved by prioritising wellbeing alongside productivity.
Challenges to sleep
There are many things that can impact someone’s sleep, which impacts performance. For example:
- Long shift hours can be very taxing on the employee especially when they are unable to get the right number of breaks during the day. This becomes more dangerous in high – risk working environments possibly leading to accidents, as fatigue can hinder an employee’s ability to work properly.
- Working shifts, night or early morning shifts disrupt the employees circadian rhythm meaning that employees are unable to feel fully rested in between shifts.
- Stress, high workloads increase the employees stress levels which thus in turn reduces their ability to fall asleep easily at night and stay asleep. This can further increase a person’s anxiety too.
- Personal factors, there are many different personal factors that can disrupt sleep such as a newborn, money worries or medical conditions such as diabetes. Any of these things can change the quality of their sleep and how much they can get.
What you can do as an employer:
As an employer you may feel there isn’t much you can do to help an employee’s ability to sleep at night, but you really can make a difference. Here are some steps you can take to improve employees rest:
- If you have shift employees, design schedules that minimise circadian rhythm disruption. Try to keep the schedule consistent and avoid long overnight shifts, changing schedules around will be harder on the employees sleep cycle.
- Provide resources and places that support rest during the workday. This can be done through flexible working hours which allows people to start work a bit later in the morning allowing them to have a lie in. For employers with lots of space and a large budget you could also follow Google’s lead by creating nap pods for employees to use during the day.
- Promote a working culture that values wellbeing and sleep. Having policies that reward positive sleeping behaviours and discourage unhealthy behaviours such as skipping breaks, excessive overtime and using caffeine to cope with the exhaustion can help.
- Offer training and support on sleep management, this can be teaching the awareness of the benefits of sleep and napping or training employees on improving sleep hygiene and management
You don’t need to do all of these things but taking and using a couple of these suggestions can massively help your employees’ work and personal lives as well as improving your company.
What can employees do?
There are many things employees can do to help try to regulate sleeping patterns and improve quality of sleep. Some tips that could help are:
- Create a regular sleeping pattern, you can do this by trying to go to sleep around similar times during the day or night especially if you are shift workers. For night shift workers especially, black out curtains help the most in being able to help the process of falling asleep during the day.
- Create a restful space for sleeping, keeping the bedroom dark, quiet and cooler.
- Monitor the work commute and working environment, long work commutes can heavily impact sleep.
- Try to do moderate exercise regularly, this can be simply walking, this can help relieve stress from the work day.
- Cut down on caffeine, alcohol and sugar in the evening. These drinks and foods disrupt the body’s ability to fall asleep and stay in deep sleep. Instead, have a warm drink in the evening, like a decaf coffee, hot chocolate or herbal teas.
- Have a wind down routine, this can be anything that helps to relax and calm the mind and body such as having a bath, reading or listening to calming music.
Conclusion
Sleep is one of the most important key components to everyday life and having good quality sleep will help make life feel slightly easier to cope with, without getting overwhelmed by small things happening in a single day. Trying to work on low amounts of quality sleep is extremely difficult and can impact more than just work. Therefore, promoting wellbeing and sleep is important, done through leading as an example and making adjustments for employees should be a priority.