6 Areas to Consider to Improve your Team’s Sleep

The Cost of Poor Sleep for Organisations

The estimated cost in the U.S. is $136 billion a year in health-related productivity losses. In the UK, this loss is estimated at £34 billion. A common misconception is that the cost is attributed to employee absences or sickness, however, more commonly, the loss is due to suboptimal performance while someone is actually at work.

As a result, ‘presenteeism’ has been coined to describe the state of being physically present at work, but not really performing.

The reason considered most likely to cause this behaviour is fatigue. Since fatigue causes a decline in alertness, learning memory, and executive function, it’s no surprise that performance is negatively impacted as a result.

Whilst there are many possible contributing factors that cause fatigue, from stress to diet and more, poor sleep quality and quantity remain key areas to consider in the first instance.

1. Culture

Many organisations and industries perpetuate the toxic notion that long days, huge workloads and working more hours than contracted is a badge of honour, or a rite of passage for those starting out on their career. We also live in a world where it’s possible to be ‘always on’ and constantly contactable and reachable due to mobiles, emails and the internet.

A more subtle question to ask in this regard could be on your coffee culture. Is coffee consumption glorified in the same way as working late? Is it relied upon in the afternoon to ‘keep you going’ at the expense of a good night’s sleep later on?

Consider how your company culture stacks up in this regard and what you could practically do to change it, if needed. Could you encourage wrapping up work on time? Could you enforce a no-contact rule outside of working hours, or when someone is on annual leave? To take a powerful stance, could your written policies be adjusted to reflect this commitment to employee rest and downtime?

You could also consider a more creative approach. Crazy Inc. a wedding company based in Japan was featured in Forbes recently for rewarding employees who get six hours of sleep for at least five days per week. They offered points redeemable at the company cafeteria for those who achieved their sleep targets.

Although this is a step in the right direction, it’s worth noting that prominent sleep researcher Matthew Walker suggests that sleeping less than 7 hours a night can seriously affect your health. So perhaps extending your sleep goal beyond Crazy Inc.’s target would be wise.

You could also take a leaf out of Google’s book. The tech giant has installed sleep pods in their offices which employees can use to relax in, or take a nap during the working day.

2.Flexibility

We’ve all heard the expression ‘I’m a night owl’ or, ‘I’m an early bird.’ Your tendency toward either is determined by your chronotype, which determines your body’s natural inclination to sleep.

Most organisations work around the early bird schedule, as it’s generally considered more productive to get up early and get more done. However, for many individuals, this could not be further from the truth and they perform better later in the day. Allowing some flexibility in your organisation’s working day, even by 1-2 hours, can allow your employees to more closely follow their chronotype cycle, meaning they’ll naturally be more productive.

3. Work Environment

Our work environment, where and how we spend our time during the day has a huge impact on how we sleep at night. This is largely due to our circadian rhythm, which is a 24 hour cycle and part of the body’s internal clock which is conditioned according to our external environment.

Our exposure to natural light is key to establishing a good circadian rhythm. One of the main reasons for poor sleep in modern society has been attributed to the creation of artificial light which confuses our natural rhythm.

One of the best ways to help our circadian rhythm is to flood your office or workspace with natural light. If you aren’t fortunate enough to be in a space with a lot of windows to facilitate this, taking breaks to get exposure outside as often as possible is really important.

4. Education

We all know that sleep is important, but many of us don’t know how to practically improve our sleep quality and quantity. We’re also in an age where we can even feel overwhelmed with too much information on the topic. We now have wearables that tell us how much REM time we’ve had each night and while it may be interesting, compulsive tracking, or wondering about what the readings will say can actually lead us to stress and negatively impact our sleep. Many of us also lack the habits to make sleep a consistent priority. For new parents, the very idea might even seem like an unattainable luxury.

Given that ‘sleep is the tide that rises all health ships’ (Matthew Walker) it’s important that we do everything we can to prioritise it and inform our decisions as best we can.

Sleep can be difficult to improve in isolation as many factors are at play, such as diet, caffeine consumption, stress, routine, family circumstances and medical conditions.

This is why Vita Wellness offers Sleep Workshops that consider these multiple variables as well as individual circumstances. Our Sleep workshops are guided by a circumstantial approach, meaning we offer practical advice tailored to who is in the room, be it new parents, night shift workers, sporty people, recent grads etc. We get a sense of lifestyle and circumstances in advance by collecting info via a questionnaire and using it to tailor our content and approach.

5. Sickness Approach

If we consider that sickness can oftentimes be the result of not enough rest, recovery and balance in life, it makes sense that should it occur, we should prioritise getting better above all else.

Consider your company approach in this regard. When an employee is unwell, what is the expectation? Take time to rest and recover, undisturbed with no questions asked? Or power through, check-in every day and get evidence from a doctor to prove yourself trustworthy?

Lack of sleep and illness go hand in hand. The same applies for sleep and a speedy recovery. Therefore, it makes sense that the most effective and time efficient way to get employees back to work and working optimally is to encourage rest and recovery when ill. To prevent it happening in the first place, you could experiment with your annual leave approach.

6. Annual Leave Approach

Is your team encouraged to take all their holiday allowance? Do you make it easy to book leave and approve all requests promptly? Again, your policies on this can have a huge impact on your team’s sense of autonomy and wellbeing.

There has been an interesting rise in offering unlimited leave days. Beyond the issue of stress arising from wondering how many days is too much, the reason for this shift and increase in popularity is quite simple, breaks are important and generally, the more the better for productivity and happiness. Look no further than the results of the 4 day work-week experiments in Scandinavia for evidence of this.

On the other hand, when annual leave is associated with scarcity, we often try to pack in as much as we can with our precious time off. The reality is, we need down-time to rest and (seemingly) do nothing. We’re probably all familiar with the feeling of needing a holiday after a holiday abroad, to catch up on sleep before returning to work. Having enough annual leave to allow for travel, plus time to do very little and rest at home, guilt free, is important.

Summary

When people have autonomy over their own lives, they are generally healthier and happier. By adjusting your policies, culture and frameworks according to the 6 areas aforementioned, your organisation can benefit from improved productivity and better engagement levels, whilst avoiding presenteeism.

If you would like to drive cultural or procedural change in your workplace, our Engagement and Culture Programme helps leadership teams implement measurable improvements and cultural change with the help of expert guidance. We also provide informative Sleep Workshops tailored to your team’s individual circumstances to help them improve their sleep quality. Get in touch quoting the service of your choice for more information: info@vita-wellness.co.uk