Study Shows Eight Million Workers Losing Sleep due to Work Stress
About 8.4 million British citizens were victims of losing sleep owing to long office times and excessive workload, reports a study conducted by insurance company RSA and YouGov on 2,100 workers from different companies. RSA has termed the phenomenon of losing sleep as WAWAW or wide awake worrying about work.
Phil Bell, the casualty director for RSA stated that people are afraid of losing their jobs, therefore they take work stress to their homes. This stress and anxiety makes them lose sleep due to various fears regarding job security. Employers must make an effort to determine whether their employees are stressed and to what extent, because lack of sleep makes people forgetful and unfocused. This may result in accidents and mistakes at workplaces. In effect, any of these will decrease the productivity and undermine the quality of work of the employees. RSA has already warned employers against letting WAWAW affect their staff.
Out of the 2,100 workers who participated in the study, 62% said that they lose upto 3 hours sleep at night due to worrying about work. Half of them admitted that they were losing sleep because they were either working for long hours or waking up at night because they were concerned about their jobs. The study also revealed that men were more affected by stress than their female counterparts.
The health and safety consultants from Workplace Law can assist managers and supervisors in all they need to know to help handle health and safety in their teams to learn about the importance of promoting a positive health and safety culture in the workplace environment, and improve upon management skills to help tackle stress in the workplace and boost team performance for a more effective working practice.
