How poor sleep impacts employees’ mental health and what employers can do about it

-By Dr Sophie Dix - VP of Content at Koa Health - Employee Mental Health and Wellbeing Solutions

Sleep is integral to health—mental and physical. And the amount and quality of our sleep impacts all aspects of our lives. Rest is particularly impactful to work—ie, what most of us spend the majority of our waking hours doing.

Poor sleep puts workers and those around them at risk

Poor rest and a lack of sleep negatively affect our ability to concentrate, learn, problem-solve, remember instructions and information and effectively communicate with the people around us. Unsurprisingly, insomnia, sleep-deprivation and poor quality sleep aren’t just bad for performance, they’re dangerous. Highly fatigued workers are less productive, twice as likely to miss work, and less safe. They’re 70% more likely to experience workplace accidents and run higher risks of road accidents on their way to work (10-20% of all road crashes in the UK have been associated with the person behind the wheel feeling overtired.

At the other (more positive) extreme, employees who sleep well are more aware, perform better, and are less likely to make a costly (or worse unsafe) miscalculation. However, typically sleep doesn’t happen at work. And it’s deeply personal subject for most. So what can employers do to support employees getting better rest?

3 ways employers can help employees get better sleep

Although the majority of factors that impact the quality of your workers’ rest are, without question, outside your purview, there are still steps you can take to support them. Here are three to get you started:

1.Give them access to sleep tools

Help your employees improve their sleep in an accessible way with digital tools or apps with activities to help them get to sleep when they’re struggling and create a better sleep routine to help them get better rest long-term.

2.Encourage a healthy work-life balance

Switching off from work and the rest of the day is the first step to getting a good night’s rest. Line managers can help employees maintain balance by setting clear expectations around when workers are expected to be online or in the office to keep work from spilling over into people’s personal life.

3.Prioritise mental wellbeing

Mental wellbeing and sleep go hand-in-hand—it’s very difficult to have one without the other. Just as people who are dealing with mental health struggles have trouble sleeping, people who deal with sleep problems long-term are likely to see their mental wellbeing impacted, and not for the better. Employers can make mental wellbeing a clear priority by speaking openly about its importance and offering inclusive, accessible resources to support it.

Without quality sleep, employees are at higher risk of developing everything from heart disease to anxiety. They’re also more likely to have trouble focusing on their work, become ill, and be involved in accidents on the job. Help keep your workforce safe and healthy, by encouraging (and enabling) employees to get the rest they need to bring their best selves to work.

Find out more about how to support better sleep (and a better employee experience) by prioritising mental health in your workplace, download The business case: Mental health and the employee experience.