Wake-up Call: Why Everyone Needs More Sleep
Margaret Thatcher
famously claimed to need only four hours of sleep a night. Yahoo CEO Marissa
Mayer reportedly gets four to six, and fashion executive Tom Ford boasts of a
mere three. But the rest of us need more sleep and, increasingly, we aren’t
getting it. Globalization, flex hours and the work-at-home smartphone ever
aglow are robbing many workers of sleep, and the consequences go beyond coming
into the office with dark circles under the eyes. Several recent studies find
that productivity, creativity and workplace morale are all taking a hit as a
quickening capitalist society and the human need for getting to REM jostle for
attention.
“The ability to access
work-related tasks through digital streams makes it harder to maintain
boundaries between work and the rest of life, and certainly sleep is an
important part of life that everyone needs,” says Stewart D. Friedman, a
Wharton practice professor of management and director of Wharton’s
Work/Life Integration Project. “The counter-revolution that is emerging
now is in essence a negotiation
in terms of accessibility. It’s challenging for employees who want to be — and
be seen as — committed.”
Corporate sleep
consultant Nancy H. Rothstein says lack of sleep is nothing less than a public
health epidemic. “We know that being a shift worker is very hard on the body, and it’s almost like everyone is a shift
worker these days because we’re all doing these crazy things at all hours, and
our body likes consistency .” And yet, few
companies are doing anything about it. “I’d like to tell you this is the newest
thing, but to me it’s the missing link that is really overlooked,” Rothstein
adds. “Employers are becoming aware of it, but as far as taking action, that
next step, it’s only starting to happen.”
Turning
in Early for Productivity
Americans have a
deeply uneasy relationship with sleep. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say their
sleep needs are not being met during the week, according to a 2011 poll by the
National Sleep Foundation. More than half say they experience a sleep problem
every night or nearly every night. Among adults between the ages of 19 and 64,
15% in the poll said they slept less than six hours a night on weeknights. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the number much higher — 30%,
or more than 40 million American workers. Sleep needs vary, but in general a
night of seven to nine hours — quality hours — is considered by experts to be
ideal.
And little or a poor
quality night’s sleep often sets the tone for rest of the day. Wharton
management professor Nancy Rothbard has found that workers tend to keep the
mood with which they come to work each morning. In a study of a Fortune 500
firm call-center, Rothbard and co-author Steffanie L. Wilk of Ohio State
University detected both virtuous and vicious cycles emerging. “People who came
to work in a more negative mood than normal were less productive,” says
Rothbard of her research, titled “Waking Up On the Wrong Side of the Bed:
Start-of-Workday Mood, Work Events, Employee Affect, and Performance.” “People
who started the day negatively logged out of the system more, and they were
less available to customers,” she notes. “Conversely, when they came to work
more positive than normal, they were less likely to use verbal tics and jargon, so they sounded more
professional when they were in a better mood.”
Indeed, a bad mood is
just the tip of the iceberg of the consequences facing a sleep-deprived nation.
The financial toll associated with loss of productivity from insomnia is steep
— about $2,280 per worker, or $63.2 billion for the total U.S. workforce,
according to the 2011 study, “Insomnia and the U.S. Workforce,” published in
the journal Sleep.
James B. Maas, a
psychologist and pioneering sleep specialist, says corporations are
increasingly folding sleep education into their wellness programs. Coiner of
the expression “power nap,” Maas says he brings speeches and workshops to 50-70
groups a year, mostly corporations. “It’s the number-one complaint people have
when they go to the doctor, and they are [typically] given sleeping pills or
told to suck it up,” he notes. “That’s just due to ignorance, because where do
you put sleep education in the medical school curriculum? Today, we have 89
different diagnosable sleep disorders, and most physicians can name five, so
even if you go to the doctor, until fairly recently you weren’t able to get
help.”
Years’ worth of
studies show that real dangers come with one’s deficit in the amount or quality
of sleep. Circadian, the Massachusetts firm specializing in staffing,
scheduling, training and risk-management issues relating to worker fatigue,
lists among them: slower response times, increased errors and mispronouncing or
slurring words; driving impairments; an increase in risky behavior, and an
inability to develop new strategies based on incoming information. These kinds
of concerns have long been known to employers like trucking firms, train
operators and medical institutions, with long shifts and lives hanging in the
balance. But worry has now spread into the white-collar realm.
“Employers with
factory workers have always been concerned with this, because there has always
been a sense of fatigue leading to accidents and OSHA-like concerns,” says
Rothbard. “But I think it’s a slightly different phenomenon we’re talking about
with cell phones never being off, where boundaries between work and non-work
are being eroded.”
Sleep
Disorders and Disordered Sleep
Binge-viewing on
Netflix may be keeping some people from their sleep, but for most adults, it’s
work. In December’s American Time Use Survey of nearly 125,000 respondents age
15 and older, “short-sleepers” (those sleeping fewer than six hours a night)
did in fact list TV, homework, commuting and socializing as activities they
were doing instead of sleeping. But far and away, work was cited as the
greatest culprit.
“The evidence that
time spent working was the most prominent sleep thief was overwhelming,” said
Mathias Basner, assistant professor of sleep and chronobiology in psychiatry at
Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, who co-authored the study along with Andrea
M. Spaeth and David F. Dinges, in a statement released in December. Technology
deserves the blame — or at least, our inability to regulate it does.
Friedman sees an
emerging awareness about the relationship between sleep and the workplace as
part of a continuum. “It’s a great movement forward, building on the human
potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s into a concern for well-being,” he
notes. “And it’s largely because of the economics of health care and the
mounting body of evidence that productivity and attraction and retention of
talent are dependent on the whole person being cared for in a way that is good
for the business as well as family and community.” Friedman himself is an “avid
napper,” grabbing 40 winks two or three times a day. “I find very interesting
places to nap,” he says.
Encouraging naps in
the workplace is one innovation, sometimes through the introduction of
nap-pods. Other methods being tried include melatonin-regulating lighting, and
offering stipends to take courses on healthy sleeping strategies. But
Rothstein, who is director of Circadian’s Corporate Sleep Programs, says that
although naps may be helpful to some, employees who need naps in the workplace
should ask whether there is a more serious underlying cause of fatigue.
“Naps are not a
substitute for a good night’s sleep,” she says. “Naps can be a great boost, and
napping rooms are cute and trendy. But why are you taking naps at the office?
It could be a Band-Aid.” Rather, the question of whether employees are getting
enough sleep needs to be considered as part of a comprehensive program, and
requires a cultural change — away from the thinking that sacrificing sleep for
the good of the company is a macho virtue. “The company cannot control how employees
sleep, but if they can have respect for it in the culture, that puts more
merits on sleep,” Rothstein adds. “So it’s no longer that you are bragging that
you get little sleep.”
Rothstein, who has
consulted with Procter & Gamble and Hyatt on sleep education, says a
comprehensive sleep program can sort employees into categories — from those who
need nothing more than a few tips for sleep hygiene, to referrals to doctors
for help with more serious problems like obstructive sleep apnea. For employees
who have relatively minor troubles with sleep, Rothstein recommends shutting
off technology at least one hour before bed, thereby eliminating interference
with melatonin production; avoiding wine before turning in, since wine can make
people fall asleep faster but interferes with sleep cycles later in the night,
and stopping caffeine consumption about six hours before bed.
“Once people
understand what their problem is, the solutions emerge pretty quickly,” she
says. “Unless you have a sleep disorder, it’s not rocket science. It’s what I
call the disordered sleep that so many of us have.”
Goodnight,
Smartphone
Beyond bonafide sleep
maladies, Friedman notes that there is an addictive quality to technology that
is making it hard for workers to resist sending just one more email before
shuteye. “We have these tools that we didn’t grow up with, and through human
history, technological advancement has always preceded the social and cultural
knowledge for how to harness the power of the new way of doing things,” he says.
“It takes trial and error. It’s a universal problem of feeling like you must
respond; there is something about these tools that taps into pleasure receptors
that make us feel good about being connected.”
Sometimes, though,
someone must be the adult. Some employers are shutting off email servers after
a certain time to level the playing field among employees who have no impulse
control and those who want a bolder line between work and home. Friedman
suggests a middle ground strategy, where employees can request permission to be
allowed after-hours access to email in special situations. “The companies that
are serious, that are allowing and indeed encouraging and requiring people to
have boundaries with their lives, especially with respect to sleep, are going
to get the best deals,” he says, “and that ultimately is what will propel
change.”
With no impetus coming
from employees or labor unions, there is only one obvious catalyst for a new
post-technology mindset. Maas finds that each time he gives a speech or workshop
at IBM, Apple or Gap — or the New York Jets — word spreads. “Now that people
are expected to work longer hours, that lack of interest on the part of
corporations is changing,” Maas notes. “Corporations now, mainly at the urging
of insurance companies and individuals, are putting in wellness programs, but
the vast majority address only exercise and nutrition. Yet exercise and
nutrition do nothing without a healthy night’s sleep, and now it’s hitting
everybody.” Maas cites as particularly powerful a 2014 Penn Medicine study
suggesting that contrary to popular belief, catching up on missed sleep might
not be fully restorative, and may lead to irreversible physical damage such as
the loss of neurons required for optimal cognition. Many say that studies showing
a correlation between sleep deficits and conditions like heart disease, type
two diabetes, cancer and early-onset Alzheimer’s are finally getting the
attention of corporations.
“In the U.S., the
business case drives it,” says Rothbard. “Certainly it’s evolving very
piecemeal. If there is a sense that we are being less productive because of all
this creep of work in the non-work space, or if it’s affecting the ability to
retain top people, then that is a wake-up call.”
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/wake-call-workers-need-sleep/
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