- 63% of employees have at some stage fallen asleep or felt sleepy whilst at work
- 73% of employees would nap at work if their boss allowed it
Falling asleep in the workplace is a common problem according to new research issued by Peninsula, the UK's largest employment law firm. 63% of UK workers admit they have either fallen asleep or felt extremely sleepy in the workplace. 73% of employees believe that if their employer would allow them to nap at work then they would do.
Deb Gibbons, Head of Diversity at Peninsula said today ìHiding behind your computer monitor and nodding off out of sight from the boss is more common than you think. Office based employees have even been known to nip to the bathroom to get a sneaky 5 minute kip. Power naps are a good way to relieve tiredness in the short term and for workers who may be desk tied they are going to start questioning where the harm is in taking a quick cat nap. Well apart from lost productivity you need to look at the wider picture. Employees who are road based driving company cars or operating machinery run the risk of not just injuring themselves by falling asleep but also compromising the safety of those around them. Now the problem begins to get serious and itís potentially an accident waiting to happen.î
ìOne incentive to consider would be to offer workers a short snooze break. Whilst this may seem like a crazy idea it could increase productivity and possibly prevent an accident in the workplace.î
ìRoad based employees should not even consider driving if they feel tired, regular breaks are encouraged for everyone who drives whether they are tired or not. It seems from research that pressures of work have a detrimental impact on how many hours sleep people need. In fact our research shows that employees need 7 hours, 15 minutes sleep a day however in reality it seems employees may not be getting this. You'll find many workers will go ëout on the towní the night before, despite being in work the next day and then feel tired the morning after. How much productivity is lost because of this? What is the real cost to the employer? Understandably it is going to be colossal, itís a silent loss of productivity,î concludes Deb Gibbons.
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6 in 10 workers admit to sleeping on the job
Falling asleep in the workplace is a common problem according to new research issued by Peninsula, the UK's largest employment law firm
