Insomnia at Work: Why Better Sleep Is Good for Employees—and Business
We tend to think of sleep as personal—something that happens at home, outside working hours.
But poor sleep comes to work with us.
I recently spoke with Benefits Alliance for their article, The Eye-Opening Truth About Poor Sleep, about the impact of insomnia on employees and what employers can do to help.
It’s an important conversation because sleep affects much more than how tired we feel the next day. Research links poor sleep with changes in attention, memory, decision-making, mood, self-control and work performance. Large reviews of the workplace sleep literature have found that better sleep is associated with better work performance, while inadequate or poor-quality sleep is associated with poorer health, attitudes, safety and performance at work.
Insomnia Is Common in Canada—and Often Invisible at Work
A recent nationally representative Canadian study found that 16.3% of adults met criteria for insomnia disorder.
Many, many more experience insomnia symptoms without meeting the full criteria for a disorder.
Unlike some health problems, insomnia can be almost invisible at work. Someone may arrive on time, attend meetings and complete their day while privately struggling to concentrate, remember information, regulate emotions or simply stay awake.
That can lead to presenteeism: being at work, but functioning below your usual capacity.
And the costs can be substantial.
The Cost of Insomnia for Employees, Employers and Canada
An often-cited Quebec study estimated the annual cost associated with insomnia syndrome at about $5,000 per person. What’s most striking in that study is that 76% of the estimated economic burden came from work absences and lost productivity rather than direct health-care expenses.
A more recent Canadian analysis looked at costs from a different angle. Rather than measuring time lost at work, it estimated the health-care costs of illnesses linked to insomnia symptoms, such as type 2 diabetes and depression, and arrived at approximately $1.9 billion in 2021.
Because these studies measured different things, their figures aren’t directly comparable. But taken together, they point to the same conclusion: untreated sleep problems carry significant costs for individuals, workplaces and society.
Poor sleep can affect how we work
The relationship between sleep and work performance has now been examined across a large body of research.
A meta-analysis of 152 studies involving workers found meaningful relationships between sleep and workplace health, attitudes, performance and safety.
A later meta-analysis focused specifically on work performance similarly found that better sleep was associated with better performance.
The effects aren't limited to productivity.
Poor sleep can interfere with the cognitive resources we need to focus, make decisions, learn new information, solve problems and regulate our emotional reactions to other people.
It can also have implications for safety. A large U.S. study found that insomnia was associated with an estimated 7.2% of costly workplace accidents and errors—but 23.7% of their total costs.
What If the Boss Isn’t Sleeping? Sleep and Leadership
Some particularly interesting research comes from organizational psychologist Christopher Barnes, who has spent much of his career studying sleep in the workplace.
His work has helped demonstrate that sleep isn't only related to how efficiently we complete tasks. It can also affect self-regulation, interpersonal behaviour and leadership.
In one workplace study, poorer sleep quality among supervisors predicted greater depletion of self-control the following day. That, in turn, was associated with more abusive supervisory behaviour and lower work engagement among their employees.
Other experimental work by Barnes and colleagues found that sleep-deprived leaders were rated as less charismatic, partly because sleep loss interfered with their ability to regulate and express positive emotion.
That means the effects of poor sleep may not stop with the person who had the bad night. In a workplace, they can ripple outward.
This is one reason employers may want to reconsider cultures that reward very long hours, late-night email or the idea that needing sleep reflects a lack of commitment.
How Work Affects Sleep, Too
Not surprisingly, the relationship works in both directions.
Poor sleep can impair work performance, while workplace stress, long or irregular hours and difficulty switching off from work can interfere with sleep.
For people with insomnia, there can be another cruel cycle:
I have an important day tomorrow. I absolutely have to sleep tonight.
Sound familiar? The pressure to sleep can itself increase arousal and make sleep more difficult. Then a difficult night reinforces worries about functioning the next day.
This is something I know both professionally and personally. Before I discovered how effective CBT-I can be, I spent many years thinking about how much harder work became after a poor night—and how worrying about the next day's performance could make the next night even harder. It’s the number one fear I hear from my clients with chronic insomnia: “If I don’t sleep well tonight, I won’t be at my best tomorrow.” And this often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The encouraging part: insomnia is treatable with CBT-I
Chronic insomnia isn't something people simply have to accept.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia.
There is also encouraging evidence that treating insomnia can have benefits that carry into the workplace. In a randomized study, Barnes and colleagues found that employees who received internet-delivered CBT-I experienced improvements in outcomes including negative mood, job satisfaction and self-control.
That doesn't mean treating insomnia has been proven to improve every possible workplace outcome. The research on productivity and economic benefits is still developing. But the evidence is strong enough to challenge the idea that sleep is irrelevant to business.
Supporting healthy sleep and effective treatment for insomnia can benefit the person who is suffering—and potentially the organization they work for as well.
Better sleep isn't time taken away from productivity. It is one of the things that makes sustained performance possible.
I talk more about insomnia, workplace culture, CBT-I and what employers can do in my interview with Benefits Alliance:
References
Barnes, C. M. (2012). Working in our sleep: Sleep and self-regulation in organizations. Organizational Psychology Review, 2(3), 234–257. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386612450181
Barnes, C. M., Awtrey, E., Lucianetti, L., & Spreitzer, G. (2020). Leader sleep devaluation, employee sleep, and unethical behavior. Sleep Health, 6(3), 411–417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2019.12.001
Barnes, C. M., Guarana, C. L., Nauman, S., & Kong, D. T. (2016). Too tired to inspire or be inspired: Sleep deprivation and charismatic leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8), 1191–1199. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000123
Barnes, C. M., Lucianetti, L., Bhave, D. P., & Christian, M. S. (2015). “You wouldn’t like me when I’m sleepy”: Leaders’ sleep, daily abusive supervision, and work unit engagement. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1419–1437. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.1063
Barnes, C. M., Miller, J. A., & Bostock, S. (2017). Helping employees sleep well: Effects of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia on work outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(1), 104–113. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000154
Barnes, C. M., & Watson, N. F. (2019). Why healthy sleep is good for business. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 47, 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2019.07.005
Chaput, J.-P., Janssen, I., Sampasa-Kanyinga, H., Carney, C. E., Dang-Vu, T. T., Davidson, J. R., Robillard, R., & Morin, C. M. (2023). Economic burden of insomnia symptoms in Canada. Sleep Health, 9(2), 185–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2022.09.010
Daley, M., Morin, C. M., LeBlanc, M., Grégoire, J.-P., & Savard, J. (2009). The economic burden of insomnia: Direct and indirect costs for individuals with insomnia syndrome, insomnia symptoms, and good sleepers. Sleep, 32(1), 55–64. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep/32.1.55
Henderson, A. A., & Horan, K. A. (2021). A meta-analysis of sleep and work performance: An examination of moderators and mediators. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2486
Litwiller, B., Snyder, L. A., Taylor, W. D., & Steele, L. M. (2017). The relationship between sleep and work: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(4), 682–699. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000169
Morin, C. M., Vézina-Im, L.-A., Chen, S.-J., Ivers, H., Carney, C. E., Chaput, J.-P., Dang-Vu, T. T., Davidson, J. R., Belleville, G., Lorrain, D., Horn, O., & Robillard, R. (2024). Prevalence of insomnia and use of sleep aids among adults in Canada. Sleep Medicine, 124, 338–345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2024.09.044
Qaseem, A., Kansagara, D., Forciea, M. A., Cooke, M., Denberg, T. D., & Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians. (2016). Management of chronic insomnia disorder in adults: A clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine, 165(2), 125–133. https://doi.org/10.7326/M15-2175
Shahly, V., Berglund, P. A., Coulouvrat, C., Fitzgerald, T., Hajak, G., Roth, T., Shillington, A. C., Stephenson, J. J., Walsh, J. K., & Kessler, R. C. (2012). The associations of insomnia with costly workplace accidents and errors: Results from the America Insomnia Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 69(10), 1054–1063. https://doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.2188
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