Nearing the end of the year, it is pretty common to see more employees are staying late at work or coming in early to finish their tasks before taking leave for long year-end vacations. While tasks are completed and deadlines are met, working overtime too often could lead to sleep loss and even potential sick days. Other effects of sleep deprivation due to working overtime are decreasing communication and hampering performance, increasing risk of becoming distracted, driving impairments, increasing number of errors, and many more.

A study from Penn State University shows that lack of sleep can cause general unwellness which might also be attributed to dehydration – not simply a poor sleep. It was said in the study that adults who get six hours sleep per night might have higher chance of being dehydrated. Later, long term dehydration can lead to more serious problems such as higher risk of urinary tract infections and kidney stones.

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Asher Rosinger, assistant professor of bio-behavioural health and anthropology at Penn State University, said,“If you are only getting six hours of sleep a night, it can affect your hydration statues. So, if you are not getting enough sleep, and you feel bad or tired the next day, drink extra water.”

Thus, to care of sleepy employees who come back to the office early after pulling all-nighter, you can simply recommend them to drink more water. Nonetheless, not only drinking water, encouraging them by promoting sleep education lessons in office can also be a better method. Here are ways you can adopt to promote sleep education according to The Ladders.  

01    Promote sleep education

People often ignore negative side of losing sleeps and stay awake until late at night, either due to job-related overtime or other personal reasons. They might have tried to get enough sleep but are often ill-equipped to begin taking step to improve their sleep. Therefore, bringing in a sleep expert can help your company design and implement targeted sleep education that meet your employees’ needs. You can also be a model of sleep-supportive behaviour to remind employees that sleep should be their number one priority besides works.

02    Use flextime to promote good sleep habits

Research indicates that flextime can increase nightly sleep by nearly an hour. Thus, it helps employees to be more productive, resilient, and trusting. It also influences work-life balance, as long as flextime does not turn into ‘all the time’. By embracing flextime, employees will likely perform better and create wellness in workplace.

03    Make sleep a part of the workplace

You can build a nap room or other designated sleeping areas for your employees. Nap rooms can be used effectively when employees feel safe and are encouraged to take a nap during workday. That being said, supervisors and leaders should provide an open encouragement of the practice. Along with sleep education, you should include how to take nap effectively.  So, it will not worsen your employees’ productivity, but make the most of brief nap to be refreshing and mentally stimulating.

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