Dr. Bill Howatt and Michel Rodrigue
You likely don’t spend too much time thinking about whether your employees have had a good night’s sleep, but maybe you should.
Employees may become sleep-deprived due to working long hours or feeling stressed about work and/or personal issues. These employees are more likely to feel fatigued, which can have negative impacts in several areas, including on their overall health, their ability to focus, and their decision-making skills. Working under the influence of fatigue can also increase the risk of errors and omissions, and can result in injury to the employee and others. Fatigue has been a factor in many serious injuries and deaths both in and out of the workplace.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that sleep is a critical concern for workers’ health. Employees who get less than six hours of sleep per night are more likely to be obese and experience heart disease, stroke, and diabetes than those who get the recommended sleep seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And, fatigue and poor sleep contribute to productivity losses, costing employers approximately $1,967 per employee, per year.
The Cleveland Clinic reports that insomnia occurs in about 33%-50% of workers. Our new world of work doesn’t help the situation. The Canadian Medical Association Journal recently reported that among the health workrs surveyed, those providing remote care might experience more sleep challenges than peers providing in-person care. Forty-two percent of remote workers wake up repeatedly during the night, yet only 29% of onsite workers report this issue.
The impact of fatigue in the workplace is gaining attention. WorkSafe BC held its first Fatigue Risk Management Symposium in 2018, where nearly 200 professionals from numerous industries attended to hear from leading experts in the field.
It’s hard enough to assess whether your employees are getting healthy amounts of sleep in person, let alone from a distance. However, the tips below can make this task a little easier.
- Implement a policy for disconnecting from work - Ontario now requires many employers in the province to have a right to disconnect policy that allows their workers to feel more secure logging off and not focusing on work. Even if your jurisdiction or organization does not fall under this legislation, having a policy for employees to disconnect makes good sense.
- Recognize indicators of fatigue - Provide information and education for workers and managers to help identify when fatigue might be an issue, so that necessary decisions can be made and appropriate actions can be carried out.
- Manage fatigue from the top down – Proactively implement policies, processes, and systems to manage workplace factors that can increase the risk of fatigue, and provide supports to help workers improve their sleep and manage risks factors related to fatigue.
- Remember: you set the tone - Findings from a meta study which looked at 20 studies of health promotion in the workplace found that “health promotion programs may be helpful for increasing employee sleep duration and subsequent daytime performance.”You hold a lot of sway when it comes to encouraging healthy habits. Talk about the value of a good night’s sleep and encourage employees to unplug as important steps in protecting their mental and physical health and safety. Make sure you’re also getting a good night’s sleep yourself!
- Some workers may need additional support – For some employees, it might be as simple as encouraging them to take their breaks and to use the vacation time they have available. However, others including shift workers, workers dealing with time zone adjustments, and those who experience other challenges (chronic pain, mental health problems, etc.) may require additional support like sleep hygiene education or cognitive behavioural therapy to address insomnia.
- Don’t assume people know about support available through your EFAP – Make sure that your Employee/Family Assistance Program (EFAP) package includes resources to help employees address sleep issues – but don’t stop there. Employees often aren’t aware of the resources available to them through their EFAP, so be sure to remind them regularly.
- Assess the extent of fatigue-relates issues in your workplace – You can’t address a problem if you don’t fully understand it. Start by seeking meaningful behavioural data from assessments, focus groups, and interviews, exploring topics that cover workers’ psychological and physical health and safety, quality of sleep, stress levels, and fatigue. The Mental Fitness Index (MFI) that drives the Psychologically Safe Workplace Awards generates data that can help you assess the percentage of employees experiencing fatigue. It can offer helpful insights into causal relationships between quality of sleep, coping ability, and discretionary effort.
- Provide training – Sleep hygiene is a trainable skill that can help employees discover and adopt good sleep habits. Remove the guesswork by providing staff with training on sleep hygiene.
- Pay attention to psychosocial risk factors such as psychological demand and work demand - These can create pressure and stress leading to fatigue and anxiety, which can negatively impact sleep. Leaders should be mindful of how the workplace environment affects workers’ experience. Work with mental health facilitators to design integrated strategies that include both prevention and support.
- Apply a Plan-Do-Check-Act approach – It is important to regularly assess processes, procedures and policies to effectively manage issues around fatigue and to ensure you are continuously improving.
Your employees are likely familiar with the value of adequate sleep, but it’s up to leaders to make it a priority in the workplace. By reinforcing these messages and linking them to workplace health and safety, you can help employees put their sleep issues to bed.
Get to know the authors – Dr. Bill Howatt and Michel Rodrigue
