Health and well-being experts on Tuesday disclosed that the lack of sufficient sleep may lead to
talent disengagement, reduced productivity and reduction in life expectancy.
The experts disclosed this during a health and wellbeing workshop at ongoing Social Media Week 2020 (SMW) held in Lagos.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the week, from Feb. 24 to Feb. 28, is tagged #Unboxing, where leaders of thought,
key stakeholders and the public to come together to explore issues that are important for the modern world.
NAN also reports that SMW is one of the world’s foremost conferences and industry news platforms for marketers.
It provides brands, agencies and technology providers with the latest insights, trends and best practices together with access
to a global community of marketing.
Fola Osasona, Employee Wellbeing and Talent Engagement Consultant, Corporate Wellness Consulting, said sleep is a naturally
recurring state of mind and body, characterised by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, reduced muscle activity
and inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles during Rapid Eye Movement (REM).
Osasona said there was need to imbibe good sleep routine to have quality and healthy rest.
She said “we encourage employees, entrepreneurs and corporate executives to take care of their sleeping pattern, it helps us to perform better at work.
“Human Resources departments should also create a nap room, where staff members can catch up with short sleep after a long distance to work.
“We are campaigning for a change on work mode, we are in a season where technology has improved to enable people to
work from home, social media has made it easy to assist those who live far from work.”
She added that an innovation called Key Performance Indicator should be introduced at work places to enable people to work from
home or resume work at a less peak time of traffic.
“There is an innovation called Key Perforce Indicator (KPI) which is measurable and part of technology to keep track of performance
outside the office space, we have really revolved and social media has come to enable us,people are not using technology, we are still at the
age of `I must be at work syndrom.”
Ruqoyah Ogunbiyi, Founder and Lead Consultant, SaneMindmental, a mental health professional, said that technology has come to stay
by using app that will aid in improving wellness.
Ogunbiyi said that with the aid of a sleep tracker app, it would help in providing and measuring the quantity and quality of sleep for effective out-put each day.
She warned against sleep paralysis, caused by the lack of adequate regular sleep.
“The major causes of sleep paralysis is sleep deprivation, or the lack of sleep. A changing sleep schedule, the use of certain medications,
stress, and other sleep-related problems.
“We can use our smart phones to get technologies, information to guide our health and mental state of mind to increase our work
productivity in our organisations.
She quoted a WHO standard for sleep as saying “about seven to eight hours of sleep is required as sleep routine for adults.”
She cautioned against the use of phones at night, bright lights, room temperature and loud noise, advising that aroma therapy, essential oils/candles
and eye pillows could be used to aid good sleep.
(NAN)
