How Your Team’s Sleep Debt Impacts Its Productivity
Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 6:16 am
The bigger the debt, the worse the impact on how you perform your job.
Yet, when organizations think of ways to make their teams more productive, more regular sleep is rarely the answer.
The last 100 years of sleep science includes tens of thousands of studies on the direct impact of sleep debt on workplace performance, and the implications are becoming harder to ignore.
Deloitte, the multinational professional services network, has escalated sleep deprivation to a “business issue”, supporting the scientific community’s findings that “people’s ability to learn, concentrate, and retain information is greatly impacted by how well-rested they are.”
This remains the case regardless of remote work practices mexico telegram data or the status of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indeed, rigorous academic research shows that sleep debt affects productivity in profound ways:
Increases in cognitive lapses that reduce alertness and attention: Researchers found a 400% increase in mental lapses following one night of missed sleep – and the same result for participants who slept for 4 hours over the course of six nights.
Increases in response times and increased errors in tasks that require sustained attention, especially under time pressure and as task duration lengthens. Research has tied sleep deprivation to an 11% increase in response times – equivalent to the increase you would see from someone with a 0.8 BAC (the threshold at which you’re deemed legally impaired).
Difficulty learning new information and acquiring new skills, with a decreased likelihood to revise and adapt strategies in response to failures. Researchers have found one night of sufficient sleep improves motor learning task speed by 20% and accuracy by 39%.
Degradation of working memory: When you sleep at night, cerebrospinal fluid and slow-wave activity both help flush toxic, memory-impairing proteins from the brain. Research has found a 40% reduction in the ability to form new human memories under conditions of sleep deprivation.
Fewer insights: Sleep, by restructuring new memory representations, facilitates the synthesis of your day. Researchers found 2x as many subjects gained insights after 8 hours of sleep than after wakefulness.
More sick days: Sleeping less than 7 hours a night has been found to make you 300% more likely to catch the common cold. Direct costs due to sickness absence could decrease by up to 28% if a workforce gets sufficient sleep.
Worse, sleep debt can have negative consequences for traits and habits that foster team collaboration and morale, including:
Increased likelihood to use a negative tone of voice. Decreasing sleep debt by 8 hours reduces negative vocal emotions by up to 67%.
Yet, when organizations think of ways to make their teams more productive, more regular sleep is rarely the answer.
The last 100 years of sleep science includes tens of thousands of studies on the direct impact of sleep debt on workplace performance, and the implications are becoming harder to ignore.
Deloitte, the multinational professional services network, has escalated sleep deprivation to a “business issue”, supporting the scientific community’s findings that “people’s ability to learn, concentrate, and retain information is greatly impacted by how well-rested they are.”
This remains the case regardless of remote work practices mexico telegram data or the status of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indeed, rigorous academic research shows that sleep debt affects productivity in profound ways:
Increases in cognitive lapses that reduce alertness and attention: Researchers found a 400% increase in mental lapses following one night of missed sleep – and the same result for participants who slept for 4 hours over the course of six nights.
Increases in response times and increased errors in tasks that require sustained attention, especially under time pressure and as task duration lengthens. Research has tied sleep deprivation to an 11% increase in response times – equivalent to the increase you would see from someone with a 0.8 BAC (the threshold at which you’re deemed legally impaired).
Difficulty learning new information and acquiring new skills, with a decreased likelihood to revise and adapt strategies in response to failures. Researchers have found one night of sufficient sleep improves motor learning task speed by 20% and accuracy by 39%.
Degradation of working memory: When you sleep at night, cerebrospinal fluid and slow-wave activity both help flush toxic, memory-impairing proteins from the brain. Research has found a 40% reduction in the ability to form new human memories under conditions of sleep deprivation.
Fewer insights: Sleep, by restructuring new memory representations, facilitates the synthesis of your day. Researchers found 2x as many subjects gained insights after 8 hours of sleep than after wakefulness.
More sick days: Sleeping less than 7 hours a night has been found to make you 300% more likely to catch the common cold. Direct costs due to sickness absence could decrease by up to 28% if a workforce gets sufficient sleep.
Worse, sleep debt can have negative consequences for traits and habits that foster team collaboration and morale, including:
Increased likelihood to use a negative tone of voice. Decreasing sleep debt by 8 hours reduces negative vocal emotions by up to 67%.