Workplace
at the ceiling at 3 a.m., making them vir- tually useless at that 9 a.m. meeting. Tiredness also makes work more dan- gerous and in the long term can make employees physically and mentally ill, which causes absenteeism at the office. The bottom line? Bad sleep affects the
bottom line. On the flip side, workplaces that acknowledge the value of rest and make jobs sleep-friendly can boost their efficiency and their competitive edge. You can literally sleep your way to success.
Work’s role in sleeplessness It’s simple: knackered people don’t work smart. “When we’re sleep deprived, our cognitive abilities are low, our ability to communicate, process information and keep our emotions in check are affected,” says Amanda Hudye, founder of Sleep- Well Consulting Inc. in Saskatoon. Sleep
Sleep Strategically
To be more efficient the next day and for the long term, Amanda Hudye, founder of SleepWell Consulting Inc. in Saskatoon suggests integrating one new sleep idea at a time.
How much? Add 30 minutes to your time in bed each night for a week. Keep adding more sleep time until you start waking up feeling rested and your thinking is clear during the day. That’s your sweet spot. Shut it down. The blue light from tech devices disrupts your body’s production of sleep-producing melatonin. Shut off your gizmos 45 minutes before bed. Install an app that will reduce blue light emissions in the evening if you use your phone or tablet as an alarm. Really, shut it down. Beyond that blue light, reading email or Facebooking at night on devices gets the brain going, triggering insomnia. Travel smart. Worried jetlag will get you down? Try taking melatonin for three days before your flight, a dose when you’re in the air, then for the first three days you’re back home to recover from jetlag quicker. Nap. If you’re feeling whipped during the day and have a place to nod off, take a 30-minute power snooze. Avoid sleeping longer or you’ll go into a more advanced stage of sleep and will struggle to wake up. If you suffer from insomnia, try to avoid the temptation to nap. Chill. You sleep better in a cool room. Take a hot bath 45 minutes before bed so your body cools off just in time for a good night’s sleep. — DP
synthesizes learning from the day before. Meanwhile, missing one night’s sleep gives you the driving ability of someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.07. That’s why 20% of fatal vehicle accidents in Canada are caused by fatigue. Exhaustion can also trigger workplace accidents: many high-profile disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill can be traced back to fatigue-driven human error. It’s not that we’re all so disorganized
that we can’t put ourselves to bed at a decent time. Work, quite simply, gets in the way of great sleep. Long hours inevita- bly cut into our personal time, so we end up staying up late watching Netflix for the downtime we crave. Then we get up extra early to spend a few minutes with the kids or to hit the gym before going to the office. And the cycle continues. Today’s employees are expected to do late-night
and early-morning conference calls with overseas clients, pull all-nighters to get reports done and answer emails and texts at all hours. Business travel is just as pun- ishing: you have multiple meetings in different cities, often on the same day. Then, when the plane lands at home, it’s back to the office or out to see a client.
The fix Although sleep doesn’t happen at work — usually — employers need to under- stand it’s one of the dominos that fall because of workplace policies. “I don’t think employers are aware of the compro- mises we oſten place on people. In Can- ada, we have a work culture that rewards long hours,” Bischoff says. Limiting work hours is a start, but always-on work- places need rules to limit texting and emailing on evenings and weekends. Set realistic travel schedules. Offer (potential- ly life-saving) free cab rides home to late- night workers. Set up a nap or quiet room. But employees will only change their
habits at home when they truly under- stand sleep’s impact, and when they’re confident management is on board with keeping employees as rested as possible. Strict policies in the rail and aviation industries, for instance, are setting rules for work hours and rest for their workers. Sutherland admits his loyalty to his work- place is related to its life-friendly policies: he can set his own hours and doesn’t feel obligated to check his email aſter 5 p.m. Hudye runs lunch-and-learn sessions and when she puts the science of how sleep works and its multiple health impacts front and centre, folks pay attention. And therein lies the competitive edge
of a sleep-friendly job. Employees stick around. They get stuff done efficiently. Executives step off the plane and into high-level meetings fresh and ready to negotiate intelligently. And the true bliss: 3 p.m. meetings where, without a coffee in sight, everyone around the table can stay focused, productive and keep their eyes open. —Diane Peters
MAY 2016 | CPA MAGAZINE | 17
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