Sleeping your way to success: Why India Inc must stop glorifying sleep deprivation – The Economic Times

Synopsis

India Inc is pouring substantial resources into enhancing employee well-being, yet one critical element is frequently overlooked: sleep. This creates an environment where burnout is equated with hard work, resulting in a mentally fatigued workforce.
India Inc has invested crores in leadership retreats, mindfulness workshops, resilience boot camps, emotional intelligence seminars, wellness apps, happiness officers and motivational speakers. But how could it let the single most powerful productivity intervention, sleep, become scandalously unfashionable?Sleep has become a luxury for the average corporate employee. Insomnia is not a health issue but a status symbol. India is manufacturing a workforce that is cognitively foggy, emotionally brittle, medically compromised and permanently exhausted.Studies suggest that 1 in 5 Indians suffers from some form of sleep disorder, while research indicates sleep problems may affect far more people than estimated. Mean sleep duration in several Indian studies is now below 6 hrs, well short of recommended levels. RAND Europe estimates that sleep deprivation costs India about $84 bn annually in lost productivity.Yet, somehow, the executive who sleeps 5 hrs is considered committed, while the one who sleeps 8 hrs is viewed with suspicion. How did we get here?Partly because India has perfected the art of confusing exhaustion with excellence. The manager who sends emails at midnight is celebrated. The employee who takes leave to recover is questioned. Global teams ensure somebody is always awake somewhere. Smartphones have transformed bedrooms into back offices.Then comes the phenomenon psychologists call ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’. After spending the entire day trapped between meetings, deadlines and WhatsApp groups, employees reclaim personal freedom by staying awake. Midnight becomes the only available leisure time. Amazon Prime-Netflix wins. Sleep loses.The damage due to sleep deprivation extends far beyond healthcare. Fatigued employees make worse decisions, commit more errors, forget important information, struggle with creativity and react emotionally under pressure. Entire organisations become slower and less innovative while convincing themselves they are moving faster.Workplaces suffer from two evils: absenteeism, people staying home because they are unwell; and presenteeism, people showing up, staring heroically at screens, contributing nothing useful, and accidentally sending emails to wrong clients. The second is usually far more expensive.Society pays a price, too. Sleep deprivation contributes to road accidents, workplace injuries, academic underperformance, family stress and rising healthcare costs. If India Inc genuinely wants higher productivity and better well-being, it should stop treating symptoms and start addressing causes:Stop glorifying sleep deprivation Leadership should demonstrate healthy habits, not conduct an annual festival celebrating heroic fatigue and voluntary brain malfunction.Establish communication boundaries Most emails do not require midnight responses. Create clear after-hours communication policies.Redesign workloads Burnout is rarely caused by employee weakness. More often, it reflects unrealistic deadlines, excessive meetings, endless reporting, poor prioritisation and chronic understaffing.Measure outcomes rather than hours Many organisations have confused being logged in with being useful. Work becomes theatre, presence becomes performance, and outcomes become an optional extra. Reward results, not screen time.Make sleep a formal health metric Annual health checks obsess over cholesterol and blood sugar while ignoring sleep quality. Use AI tools that give sleep quality index. Track fatigue risks. Treat sleep health as seriously as cardiovascular health.Train managers to be sleep-aware Many managers unintentionally create organisational insomnia through poor planning and manufactured urgency. Leadership training should include workload management and healthy work practices.Accept a simple reality. AI can operate continuously. Humans cannot.The irony is that companies desperately seeking innovation may be systematically destroying the conditions that make innovation possible. Creativity, judgement, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence and problem-solving all depend heavily on adequate sleep.A tired brain is not a productive brain. It’s merely an awake one. Perhaps the greatest corporate myth of our time is that sleep is the enemy of success. In reality, it may be the cheapest productivity tool ever invented.Before spending another crore on resilience workshops, India Inc might consider a radical experiment. Let people go home on time and get their alpha sleep. RoI could keep everyone awake for all the right reasons.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)

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