Today is World Sleep Day, where the theme “Sleep Well, Live Better” aims to highlight how quality sleep is essential for physical, mental, and emotional health.

REM’s 1998 hit “Daysleeper” serves to demonstrate the reality of the day’s subject, as it chronicles the life of a worker on the nightshift with lyrics describing fluorescent overhead lights, blinding screens, and the gentle pull of bed that sit atop a wistful guitar melody. 

Maybe the song’s daysleeper was in need of some decent, actual REM – rapid eye movement for the uninitiated – to lift him out of his despairing mood: “I cried the other night, I can’t even say why.”

REM is an essential part of a healthy sleep cycle that enables better brain function, memory, and emotional regulation. When adults get less than two hours of REM sleep a night, several critical brain and body functions can be affected. 

But should poor sleeping patterns be a concern for employers? Thomas Martin of wealth management firm Mattioli Woods’ thinks so, arguing that employers can no longer afford to ignore a workplace performance issue “hiding in plain sight.”

“In a workforce already navigating economic uncertainty, digital overload and blurred boundaries between home and work, poor sleep can become both a mental health trigger and a productivity drag,” he says.

Lack of sleep doesn’t just mean a lack of “Shiny Happy People” at work; it impacts concentration, decision-making, and productivity. “Over time, that becomes a business risk,” Martin notes.   

Poor sleep can be caused by a whole host of causes, like financial stress, addictive digital habits (such as late-night doomscrolling), and poor work-life balance, that can all exacerbate the symptoms of anxiety and depression, which also cause insomnia.  

The vast majority of the UK population know what it’s like to feel exhausted, with nine-in-ten suffering with sleep issues, according to The Sleep Charity. The charity estimates 50 million working days are lost to sleep deprivation every six months, which costs the UK economy around £40bn a year.

In its 2024 manifesto calling for greater government intervention into Britain’s “sleep crisis”, the charity asks for a National Sleep Strategy that includes right-to-disconnect legislation. Though Labour did mull such a provision in its flagship Employment Rights Act, it was ultimately left on parliament’s cutting room floor. 

Is it the end of the world as we know it? Not according to Labour. But France, Australia, Cyprus, and Italy, to name a few, have all passed the right-to-disconnect laws, providing protections against work bleeding into workers’ home lives. 

The risk to businesses should not be downplayed. In the US, for example, a junior analyst sued Centerview Partners alleging the M&A advisory firm reneged on a guarantee that she would be allowed a nine-hour period to sleep to manage her mood and anxiety disorder.  

The case was teed up to potentially provide legal restraints to an industry famed for its unrelenting long hours, but the settlement means the status quo will probably continue for some time to come. 

Back in the UK, Martin advises employers not to think sleep as a “soft” wellbeing topic, but to incorporate it into a broader resilience strategy. 

Easy wins including hosting awareness sessions on sleep hygiene and digital wellbeing, encouraging healthier workload conversations, financial education to reduce stress triggers, and providing access to practical tools that improve quality of rest, he says. 

Some studies have even recommended introducing power naps to the workplace to help improve employees’ wellbeing. The likes of Google, Ben & Jerry’s, Procter & Gamble, and Nike all provide employees with space and time to nap on the clock. 

“In a world focused on productivity hacks and performance tools, perhaps the most powerful intervention is the simplest one: helping people switch off. Because when people sleep better, they think better. And when they think better, businesses perform better,” Martin says. 

Maybe, better educating staff on sleep, and strict enforcement of a work-life balance, will ensure they don’t feel “Half A World Away”.