World Sleep Day – Why Sleep is Important in Business

Today is World Sleep Day, a good excuse to grab some extra Zs. Research has found that poor sleep is impacting over 5 million UK businesses.

The Average UK employee misses 8.5 days of work a year due to poor sleep

• 1 in 3 people in the UK currently suffering from sleep problems

World Sleep Day is today and recent research has shown that one in three people in the UK currently suffering from sleep problems. It’s time for people to wake up to the impact poor sleep is having on the UK’s 5.4 million businesses.

Not only has poor sleep been linked with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, but also decreased productivity and concentration in the workplace.

The Cost of Poor Sleep

Information from the World Sleep Survey by Big Health, creators of the clinically-proven sleep improvement app Sleepio, reveal that the average UK employee loses 8.5 days of work a year due to poor sleep. Sickness absence and working-age ill-health, including poor sleep, currently costs the UK economy £100 billion a year, while sleeping pills alone cost the NHS nearly £50 million a year.

‘Poor sleepers’ (those who rated their sleep quality as below average) missed 14.6 days of work per year. Alarmingly, 60 per cent of these poor sleepers don’t seek to fix the problem and did not consult their doctors about their bad sleep.

Sleepio help some of the world’s leading companies, such as LinkedIn and Ford, to improve employee wellbeing and boost productivity in the workplace. The app creates personalised sleep improvement plans featuring Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques to help sufferers overcome poor sleep without pills.

The 2,500 British participants in the World Sleep Survey stated that the top three personal impacts of poor sleep are a decline in energy levels (60 per cent), mood (48 per cent) and relationships with others (35 per cent). These repercussions affecting their work with a reduction in: concentration levels (46 per cent), ability to complete work (38 per cent) and ability to stay awake during the day (27 per cent).  

Addressing the Sleep Issue

“Poor sleep is the unspoken productivity killer in the workplace and it has been ignored for too long”, said Peter Hames, CEO and co-founder of Big Health. “Now is the time for employers to wake up to the problem of sleep – improving employee’s sleep positively impacts workplace effectiveness and general wellbeing.

“Big Health are working with some of the world’s leading companies to help them improve the sleep of their workforces with Sleepio, and seeing huge improvements in productivity and overall health as a result.”

Colin Espie, co-founder of Big Health and professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, added, “World Sleep Day is the perfect time to acknowledge the widespread effect poor sleep has on our lives.

“Sleep is not an optional extra in life, it is a fundamental requirement. The consequences of a bad night’s rest affect us not only physically but also mentally and emotionally, seriously impacting our performance at work. Physically we will feel lethargic, mentally we become slowed down with poorer concentration and memory, and emotionally we may become irritable and rather down, with bursts of hyperactivity. In terms of daily life, no aspect of daily functioning is unaffected by sleep – least of all our jobs.”

Sweet Dreams

So, what better time than World Sleep Day to start thinking about your own sleeping patterns, and what you can do to improve this. Why not check out some gadgets that might help you sleep better, or get some tips from the sleep and productivity experts?

Whatever you do, make sure you sleep well this weekend!