Article by the Drummond Team
“Wake up to the science, boss: 9am starts ‘are risk to workers’ health!”
Beginning work at 10am would allow most staff to follow their natural sleep patterns and reduce illness, a new book claims.
Dr Paul Kelley (former headmaster of Monkseaton community school on Tyneside) and a research associate in sleep science at the Open University, is calling on workplaces to scrap the traditional 9am-5pm day. Some workers should be allowed to start at midday, he says, though a 10am start would suit most employees.
In his new book, Body Clocks, published this month, Kelley says it is not just teenagers who have different body clocks; workers’ health can be damaged if they ignore their circadian rhythms.
Kelley says bosses who want more healthy, happy, productive employees must delay clocking-in times by at least an hour to allow more workers to operate according to their natural sleep patterns. If they do not offer more flexible workplaces, they could end up being sued for making workers ill, he warns.
“Across the western world, adults are averaging 6½ hours sleep a night during their working lives, when science shows we need at least eight,” says Kelley, 70.
To start work at 10am, Kelley says, people would wake at 8am. “This would have an immediate positive impact on current levels of adult sleep deprivation caused by early workday start times. It would reduce sleep deprivation by 70%, to 36 minutes on average a day.”
The book suggests that everyone take a test to work out their natural wake pattern, or chronotype, and adapt their work schedules accordingly.
(and recent research links a lack of sleep to obesity, mental illness, cancer and early death!)
Source: the times.co.uk