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Summary: Guest: Carolyn Schur, workplace sleep expert discusses:
- Living as a night owl in an early bird world.
- The impact of poor sleep on workers, employers and business owners.
- The benefits of good sleep in the workplace.
- How workplaces can hinder the sleep of their staff.
- The roles and responsibilities for staff and employers.
- Specific elements of a sleep friendly workplace.
Links mentioned in the show:
Carolyn Schur’s website: www.carolynschur.com
Books: Working ‘Round the Clock: A Survival Guide for Shift and Night Workers, Chasing Success, Birds of a Different Feather, Alert @ Work: All available at https://carolynschur.com/product-category/books/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynschur/
Show notes with time they occur in the episode:
2:30 – Carolyn talks about her personal life in Saskatoon, Canada.
4:10 – Carolyn talks about being a night owl in an early bird world. As a teenager she struggled with getting up in time for school. Being a night owl became especially problematic in the workplace, especially getting to work on time. It was especially frustrating because they would notice that she was coming into work a bit late, but she didn’t get credit for staying at work long after everybody else had gone home. And she always got her work done. So she wondered why they focused so much on what times you got to work rather than the quality and quantity of work that she was able to achieve.
It was a source of guilt for her, so she just focused on what the work she was doing and doing it well. She started to become more assertive and saying that she would not come to the early morning meetings.
8:00 – This experience has resulted in her encouraging organizations to have flexible work schedules and the focus on the quality and quantity of work being achieved. And achieving goals and outcomes.
9:20 – Poor sleep has a big impact on the worker. And their experience of work. When find i can’t sleep and you come to work you will feel sleepy and grumpy. You will not be able to do your best work. You are more likely to have conflict with others when you are grumpy. When you’re well rested you feel better and so your interactions with others are more productive. It avoids conflict and misunderstanding. Issues come up every day. If you don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with it effectively, everybody suffers. You don’t do your best to work, and you don’t feel well, and you don’t have good interactions with your fellow workers. You are less likely to get promoted.
12:00 – For the employer, the issues are safety and injuries, and another is the cost of Health Care. And workplace insurance. Staff are more likely to make mistakes, have injuries, have accidents. All have consequences to the employer. Sleepy workers have higher levels of absenteeism.
13:40 – The benefits to workers if they do get sleep well is that you feel healthier, you’re in a better frame of mind, you’re more productive. You have increased creativity and ability to problem-solve. Sleep allows us to emotionally and intellectually refresh ourselves. If you want to perform well at work you need to sleep well. Better interactions with staff.
15:50 – There is a return on investment for the employer to put systems in to have staff well-rested. There is a lot of data to prove this. It is the cost of healthcare, the cost of sick time, the cost of absenteeism, cost of turnover. This is especially true for people with sleep disorders especially if they are not diagnosed properly.
When there are accidents or even deaths you can also take a hit to your brand. Poor workplace sleep practices can also make it difficult to recruit good quality staff. Potential employees can find out that the organization doesn’t really care about the health and well-being of their staff.
19:00 – Workplaces can negatively impact the sleep of their staff if they can’t sleep. They have very stressful workplaces. For instance, demands on production, or interactions with other employees, or a boss who is the dictator. Or any other multiple of reasons. When you’re stressed at work, you probably won’t sleep very well, and when you don’t sleep very well, it adds extra stress at work. Another big issue is overtime and on-call work where it is excessive. Then you just don’t get adequate rest time. When there’s excessive overtime there is then the lure of money and employees will desire the money despite the negative impacts on their sleep and their health and well-being.
22:30 – the employer needs to set the tone and expectations around sleep and Wellness. The two branches need to work together, the employer needs to have a good environment that allows good sleep, and the staff need to protect their sleep as well. She once gave a presentation at an organization that had horrible work schedules for their staff. Excessive overtime, very poor employee-employer relationships, all kinds of grievances. It was a toxic workplace. She was supposed to do a series of presentations to the employees, but after the first presentation she went to the client and told them that she will not do the presentations. She can’t tell the employees what to do to fix their sleep when the employer creates an environment where that’s not possible. So the employer has to set the tone.
26:30 – Providing facilities and services conducive to good sleep. These are things that an employer can do by design to make sure that staff have what they need at the workplace, that supports people not becoming fatigued. They can have access to sources of healthy food. This helps them overcome fatigue. Make sure the staff have adequate and frequent rest breaks. We have a natural physiology with the brain where it needs to rest about every 90 minutes. Allow our muscles and our brains to have a rest and have a snack. You could also provide resting facilities such as wellness rooms or quiet rooms. Where they can take 15 or 20 minutes to regenerate and gather their thoughts. Have a quick nap and then be good for work again. This is becoming more common. It’s especially popular in places where there is long hours of work such as technology companies.
32:20 – Providing sleep education, sleep facts and things to help you to sleep. The first would be to cover the benefits of adequate sleep and sleep facts and why to simply sleep. This lets them know that having a good sleep is not an option, it’s something that they really have to make a priority and make changes if they think i can’t sleep. We tend to make sleep a low priority, and this helps make it a high priority to get staff to look for things to help you to sleep. The second would be education about sleep disorders, sleep facts and answer why can’t I sleep and when to take a sleep test. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but the benefits can be huge for those who are suffering from a sleep disorder and want to simply sleep and to know about things to help you to sleep. Then the sleep disorder can be diagnosed and treated which has a big payoff. The third is fatigue management. And how to maintain alertness. It can also include stress management, especially the fact that to sleep well helps to reduce stress.
35:40 – Also it’s important to provide education to the employers. And safety supervisors and HR professionals. So they know some sleep facts that any policy that they implement could have an impact on sleep and workplace wellness.
36:40 – Policies and procedures. One issue is to do sleep disorder screening and sleep tests. Providing support to people who have sleep disorders including insomnia. This includes supporting people who are on a stress leave in part due to sleeping issues and who can’t simply sleep. It can include flexible schedules. Flexible schedules can accommodate night owls, but also people that have other life events happening such as caring for children or even their parents. If they have more control then they feel less stressed and will simply sleep better and perform better. It can include napping policies. But it can’t be an uncontrolled napping policy. You need to be able to ask for it and explain why you need it and why you’re doing it.
40:20 – Some of the elements of a good napping policy. The first is that an employee can request a nap with their supervisor and not think that I can’t sleep. So the supervisor knows where their staff are and what they’re doing. The nap should be no more than 20 minutes to sleep well. Employer does not have the responsibility of making up for your sleep deprivation by providing hour and a half long naps. They’re responsible for making sure that you are safe in the moment and a 20-minute nap will be adequate to ensure that you can get that quick refreshment. And only one nap per shift. Another is the nap is away from your workstation, not your head on your desk. It could be a recliner or a yoga mat.
43:40 – Operational considerations. Control the stress level in the workplace. Reducing persistent and excessive overtime is a huge issue. If you look at your turnover rate, your sick time, your accident rate you will see that excessive overtime does not pay. You can correct that that by having adequate staffing. In some workplaces they don’t even get work breaks, so it’s hard to talk to them about health and wellness in the workplace. If you are working shift work, then having best practices shift work schedules is important. So have schedules that allow adequate rest and let them sleep well.
49:00 – What you can do today so you sleep better tonight and feel and function better tomorrow: Look at managing your stress, and if you don’t sleep well look into the possibility that you may have a sleep disorder and look for things to help you to sleep. If you sleep well when you do sleep, but you’re not getting enough sleep, then you need to make sleep a higher priority and put “sleep before chores”. This means that you’re going to give yourself the gift of sleep today even if you have more things that need to get done.
50:00 – You can go to her website which is www.carolynschur.com, there’s lots of printed resources, presentations, and a wealth of articles on all these topics that we talked about today, as well as a podcast with two minute presentations.
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