What an 24 extra minutes in bed does for your health
Since the pandemic, the terms "hybrid working" and "working from home" (WFH) have become regularly used. While many Brits started to return to the office once COVID-19 cases were curbed, a lot of workers are still logging on remotely four years on from the initial outbreak – or doing a mixture of office days and WFH.
According to the latest ONS stats released this week, 13% of British working adults said they work completely remotely, while a quarter (28%) said they had a hybrid setup.
Interestingly, not only were men, managers, parents and over 30s more likely to follow a hybrid working model, those who do work from home – whether part-time or five days a week – were said to get an extra 24 minutes of sleep or rest, compared to their office-working counterparts. They also spend an average of 15 extra minutes on exercise, sports and wellbeing activities.
There has long been evidence to suggest a correlation between sleep, productivity, mental health and physical health, but could as little as 24 minutes make all the difference?
Professor Kevin Morgan of Loughborough University, who has dedicated his career to researching human sleep, says that the power of rest – however brief – should not be underestimated. Even a few extra minutes of sleep per day can help improve our mood, focus and functionality.
He tells Yahoo UK: "Sleep extension can offer all kinds of health benefits. Those we call 'short sleepers' are more prone to heart disease, they die younger, and they’re bigger than the rest of the population. By improving cardiometabolic health through sleep, you can reduce the risk of heart disease and increase your longevity. It’s not just that sleeping better helps you feel better – this has real implications for your health and wellbeing."
When it comes to how much sleep we need, Professor Morgan is quick to dispel the eight-hour "myth". "The recommended level of sleep is seven- to nine-hours," he says. "But that’s a pretty broad window".
Ideally, we need enough sleep to help us function and feel reasonably refreshed when we wake up. He also points out that those who are younger tend to sleep more and as we get older, our ability to sleep for long periods of time diminishes, and so the criteria of a “good night’s sleep” is all relative – we can also run the risk of sleeping too much, which can have similar effects to not getting enough rest.
Acknowledging that the majority of the population will fall into the seven- to nine-hour category, Professor Morgan reflects on how our collective sleeping habits changed during the pandemic. Without the daily commute to the office, many of us were getting up later – we no longer needed to wake up early to get ready and factor in the journey time to the office. And in doing this, we therefore had a lower "sleep debt" during the week, which, pre-pandemic, was traditionally offset on the weekends with lie-ins.
Although not in every case, broadly speaking, those still benefiting from extra sleep through hybrid working have the option to reduce their sleep debt during the working week, which in turn could allow them more time on the weekends or on their days off to spend socialising and exercising, rather than sleeping.
Despite the apparent benefits to sleep and overall wellbeing hybrid working appears to have, though, Professor Morgan is keen to impress the importance of habit and routine. "One of the things about hybrid working is that it possibly – just possibly – risks shifting schedules around a bit. So sometimes that regularity that accompanies going to work every day may be lost."
To counteract this, Professor Morgan suggests that it may benefit hybrid workers to wake up and go to bed at the same time each day – regardless of whether they are working in the office or at home. "If you do things in a regular, metronomic sort of way, then your sleep will be better looked after than if you shift your schedules around, which can sometimes ambush your circadian rhythm," he adds.
Finally, when it comes to the mental health benefits of "slowing down" – a trend popularised on social media during and after the pandemic – Professor Morgan says that people who have adopted a hybrid model of working, who have more time in the morning to ease into their day and avoid the stressful commute, are not any less productive.
He says: "People have learned that they can achieve productivity in a different way that is basically more comfortable for them. There is no longer so much of this guilt about being missed from work or absent from your desk, or that you will fall behind if you’re not in the office.
"We've learned that we can still achieve those goals. We can still do what's expected of us, but in a different way – in a different, comfortable way, that allows us more flexibility and less stress."
Overall, the health benefits of hybrid working – especially when it comes to our sleep – far outweigh the negatives, and the negative of a disrupted routine can easily be combatted. With more and more workers and companies adopting this method of working, and there being no clear signs of it going anywhere, it seems like we could see a shift towards a healthier, happier future.
Read more on health and work:
You're less likely to get promoted if you work from home, study shows (Yahoo Life UK, 3-min read)
The exact time you should go to bed, according to sleep experts (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
How to achieve a flexible working pattern that benefits your health (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
