If your employees are yawning at their desks, here’s how you can help
What your staff do in their bedrooms is rarely an employer’s business – but if they’re not getting enough sleep, it might be time for HR to lend a hand.
A workplace safety expert says companies increasingly see a good night’s sleep as something they can assist with through both scheduling, and their benefits plan.
“When we have workers who are consistently tired and exhausted, and they’re coming in to do the job, should the organization be concerned? Absolutely,” says Mike Harnett, vice president of Human Factors at SIX Safety Systems.
Sleep deprivation has multiple risks to employers, among them accidents, lower productivity, errors, and even car crashes on a worker’s drive home, as well as poor overall health.
Employers can help prevent those issues by considering sleep in the same way they do other health issues, Harnett says.
“By looking at the benefits plan, we can start to identify if there are some ways that the organization can minimize some of those risks.
“Do we have a process for those workers to go and see a sleep clinic? Is that part of the benefits plan, or do they have to pay for that out of pocket, or do they have to wait for the provincial government, which takes forever?
“If we have people with sleep apnea, does the plan cover the cost of a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, which is the only real recognized solution to the problem.”
She says many organizations don’t yet recognize sleep as their problem to deal with “because they’ve never looked for it, they don’t know what to measure”.
Collecting data on workplace fatigue-related incidents, the time they occurred, staff schedules leading up to those, and how much sleep staff got the night before can help identify whether sleep is an issue the company should help address via its staff benefits program.
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A workplace safety expert says companies increasingly see a good night’s sleep as something they can assist with through both scheduling, and their benefits plan.
“When we have workers who are consistently tired and exhausted, and they’re coming in to do the job, should the organization be concerned? Absolutely,” says Mike Harnett, vice president of Human Factors at SIX Safety Systems.
Sleep deprivation has multiple risks to employers, among them accidents, lower productivity, errors, and even car crashes on a worker’s drive home, as well as poor overall health.
Employers can help prevent those issues by considering sleep in the same way they do other health issues, Harnett says.
“By looking at the benefits plan, we can start to identify if there are some ways that the organization can minimize some of those risks.
“Do we have a process for those workers to go and see a sleep clinic? Is that part of the benefits plan, or do they have to pay for that out of pocket, or do they have to wait for the provincial government, which takes forever?
“If we have people with sleep apnea, does the plan cover the cost of a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, which is the only real recognized solution to the problem.”
She says many organizations don’t yet recognize sleep as their problem to deal with “because they’ve never looked for it, they don’t know what to measure”.
Collecting data on workplace fatigue-related incidents, the time they occurred, staff schedules leading up to those, and how much sleep staff got the night before can help identify whether sleep is an issue the company should help address via its staff benefits program.
Related stories:
