Why your boss needs to take a look at your bedroom habits
If you’re one of the millions of Australians not getting your recommended eight hours sleep each day, would you be willing to let your boss into your bedroom to fix that?
Key points:
- Four in 10 Australians are not getting enough sleep
- An expert says many people underestimate the importance of sleep
- An inquiry has urged a national approach to address sleep issues
Businesses across the country are enlisting the help of sleep consultants to audit the bedroom habits of their workers, and improve their shut-eye.
Multinational construction group Lendlease put nearly 3,000 of their workers through a sleep program that analysed workers’ habits, distractions and even how their bedrooms were set-up.
The company’s head of health and wellbeing, Jane Gardner, said good sleep was crucial for the safety of their workers on dangerous building sites.
“In 2017, we undertook a global health and wellbeing survey of our employees, and at that time the results showed nearly half of our people weren’t getting the recommended seven to nine hours sleep per night,” she said.
“We work in such a high-risk industry and research tells us that sleep is vital for our rest and recovery, for our mental health and our wellbeing.”
Melissa Webster runs SleepFit — one of the few companies going into workplaces to improve staff sleep habits.
“People just don’t understand the importance of sleep,” she said.
“Tired people make more mistakes and that’s just a fact.
“When we sleep, we essentially cleanse our brain. And when we short-change ourselves of that sleep, the brain doesn’t get cleansed to the way we need.”
According to the Australia Talks National Survey, 61 per cent of Australians would be happier with more sleep.
Young people are more likely to think more sleep would make them happier, with 70 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 wanting more sleep, compared with only 36 per cent of those aged 75 and over.
Ms Webster said there were often simple changes people could make to increase the quantity and quality of their sleep.
“We would be getting them to look at some critical things — first of all, their daily routine.
“Our bodies run by a master clock and our brain loves routine.
“It’s really important for your sleep health to maintain that routine, and [for] your lifestyle. Things like coffee, for example, and trying to minimise that after lunchtime, alcohol before bed, the temperature of your room.
“The noise — block out noise. Then it’s your bedroom set-up, so take all the devices out of your bedroom.
“Then the critical one: calming your body, calming your mind before bed and what you do when you wake up at 3:00am to help yourself get back to sleep.”
Ms Webster said research suggested four in 10 Australians do not get enough sleep, and the resulting lost productivity costs more than $66 billion annually.
But Associate Professor Alan Young from the Australasian Sleep Association said many people still underestimated the importance of sleep.
“Everyone’s aware of the importance of a healthy diet, exercising regularly, but sleep is often that forgotten third pillar of good health,” he said.
“There’s overwhelming evidence now that sleep loss leads to a myriad of physical and mental health problems, ranging from cardiovascular disease through to depression.”
Earlier this year, a Federal Government inquiry into sleep recommended a national approach to working hours to address sleep issues in the workplace.
Six months on, the Government is yet to accept or reject any of the recommendations.
“The Government is currently undertaking extensive consultation with multiple agencies and government portfolios to determine the position regarding implementation of the recommendations,” a spokesperson for Health Minister Greg Hunt said.
Associate Professor Young said bosses needed to put more emphasis on sleep when considering the health of workers.
“I think this will become a commonplace thing,” he said.
“Impaired sleep going into the workplace can decrease productivity, so it’s bad for the bottom line of the business, but also increase work accidents.”
Ms Webster said she had seen positive results from the sleep tests and individualised programs.
“What we found with our programs when we’ve gone into organisations, is that we’ve had a 16 per cent improvement on stress and anxiety and depression scores,” she said.
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