Welcome back to the Wellington Beds blog! When was the last time you pulled a sickie from work? If you’re doing it too often (and for genuine reasons) it could be your sleeping pattern that’s to blame for your illness susceptibility or frequent burn-out.

A new study published in the medical journal Sleep has revealed the optimum amount of sleep required to produce reliable rates of work attendance. Data was collated over 7.2 years surveying working residents of Finland and their sleeping patterns. Participants were employed men and women between the ages of 30 and 64. Among the sleep conditions studied were sleep apnea, sleeping pill use, daytime exhaustion, and early morning awakenings.

Researchers hoped to reveal links between these sleep sicknesses and participants’ levels of work absenteeism. Not surprisingly, they found strong correlations between regular sleep disturbances and the likelihood of employees missing work.

However, an interesting side result of the study was its revelations about sleep duration and absenteeism. Among otherwise healthy participants, sleeping too long or not enough had a noticeable impact on absenteeism.

Researchers found that the average optimal amount of sleep for women was 7.6 hours, which resulted in the most positive records of work attendance. The average optimal amount for men was a similar 7.8 hours. On average, participants who slept under 7 hours or over 8 hours were taking 9 to 10 more sick days per year than those in the golden zone. It seems that undersleeping and oversleeping are equally detrimental to work attendance!

Overall, researchers also concluded that direct business costs due to sickness absence could be reduced by up to 28 percent if all employees had regular, sound sleep of the correct duration.

This result is yet another in a long string of recent studies which have shown that 7-8 hours of regular sleep each night helps us all to be more active, mentally aware, and physically healthy. Regularly getting more or less sleep than this can be destructive to our wellbeing, and result in poor work performance and physical or mental exhaustion. The importance of getting the right amount of sleep in this increasingly stressful dog-eat-dog world can’t be overstated.