Losing just 16 minutes of sleep greatly impacts job performance: Study

Minor sleep loss can affect your job more than you think. In fact, it takes losing just 16 minutes of sleep to determine whether you're clear-headed at the office or you are distracted.

This was proven in a new study published in Sleep Health which found that when you shorten your sleep routine during the work week, it will greatly interfere with your job performance. Further, University of South Florida researchers involved in the study also found that workers are "more likely to have poor judgement and fall off-task the next day."

Soomi Lee, PhD, Assistant Professor in the School of Aging Studies and lead author of the study, said: ""Findings from this study provide empirical evidence for why workplaces need to make more efforts to promote their employees' sleep. Good sleepers may be better performers at work due to greater ability to stay focused an on-task with fewer errors and interpersonal conflicts."

As part of the study Lee and the other researchers surveyed 130 healthy employees working in IT, who have at least one child of school-going age. These respondents revealed that on days they slept 16 minutes less and encountered worse sleep quality, they faced more cognitive issues the next day.

Due to this, their stress levels were raised - especially when concerned about work-life balance - and they ended up heading to bed earlier on that night, but waking up earlier and feeling fatigued.

However, when work days were compared to weekends, it was concluded that the consequences of sleeping less are not as apparent when the individual has no work the next day.

As previously shared on Human Resources, the length and quality of sleep can indeed have an impact on more than staff's work performance. Further, if you do notice your staff seeming sleep deprived, enouraging them to drink more water could help.