Sleeping on the Job
According to research carried out by Travelodge, we are getting an hour’s less sleep this year than we were last year. Instead of dropping off, we are worrying about work-stress, and money. More than 50 per cent of employees said their performance was worse after getting so little sleep, and the survey estimated that reduced sleep is costing employers around £1 billion per year. Twenty-eight per cent of workers said they had taken a day off following a bad night’s sleep, which is the equivalent of eight million sick days a year compared with just more than three million in 2008.
Apparently seventy per cent of people felt they were a “horrible person” to be around and difficult to work with, when they had not had enough sleep. It’s a vicious circle. The more we lie awake worrying, the less capable we are the next day. The less capable and the more ‘horrible’ we are, the more our work builds up and relationships get damaged, so there is more and more to worry about with each night that passes.
I know people don’t relish the thought of taking active steps to ‘sort out’ their workplace relationship stresses, but there comes a point when, if only to get a good night’s sleep, it is necessary to sit down with the people or person causing you to lie awake at night rigid with tension, and clear the air. Mediation is of course the best way to do this – feel the fear and mediate anyway, as I like to put it – and now who knows, mediation could be the nation’s new remedy for insomnia.