Working India is sleepwalking into a crisis

New Indian Express

02-06-2025

What's troubling sleep? A recent exercise we undertook across a 3,600-strong sample in 12 work environments is telling. Employees are sleeping less across all verticals of work. People in sales and retail are sleeping less than anyone else. People in banking are sleeping less as well. Everyone with a work target defined for themselves is sleeping less. Everyone who has a salary linked to a variable remuneration pattern is sleeping that much less. The biggest item that is robbing sleep is this yen to achieve. While a bulk of it is boss-driven (67 percent), the balance (33 percent) is driven by the self-motivated and motivating employee. While the boss is ruining the sleep for some, in two thirds of the cases, the individual employee is robbing himself of sleep. The workplace today is competitive. Everyone is pitted against one another. The best of corporate workplaces who pride themselves to be 'good' and 'great' places to work, have the biggest of challenges. Employees probed for reasons why sleep eludes them as much as they need or want indicate a toxic workplace to be the prime reason that is poisoning their sleep.
Sleep is, therefore, a big industry ahead. Sleep therapists, sleep consultants and sleep gurus are the future of this large industry. As many working people, that many sleep deprived folks (at least 21 percent of them who are already acknowledging the fact that they are sleep challenged). Bengaluru has just joined an elite global tech club as one of the 12 cities with a tech workforce of more than 1 million people. By sheer extrapolative logic, sleep is a big industry in this city for sure. Literally, 0.21million of Bengalureans in the tech space are likely to be sleep-challenged. If not a pandemic, it sure sounds like an endemic. Whatever it is, is it not time all of us tackled the issue and held the sleep bull by its horns? Or does it just have one horn, like a 'unicorn'? I'm not sure.
The industry of sleep is slated to boom. Expect every mattress company to come up with the 'intelligent mattress' that measures your sleep and puts you to sleep when you want. Expect the sleep apps to go berserk. Expect the sleep gummies market to boom. Sleep music is already a genre on its own. I have just checked into a hotel in Delhi and the hotel offers me a meditative playlist that promises to be soothing enough to put me to sleep. Will hotels offer a lullaby artist next? Hotels are offering sleepwear you can buy, made of fabric that promises to be so soft on your skin that it can lull you to sleep. Another hotel is offering a tapping exercise to 'un-loud' your mind and help melt stress, whatever that means. Sleep is a big industry in a country deprived of it.
As I close, I must recall one sentence that has stayed in mind for three decades since I heard it first. It comes from our venerated N R Narayana Murthy, who is a personal icon of mine. It's about a pillow. And a pillow is something that gets as close as it can to good sleep. I repeat his evocative words: 'A clear conscience is the softest pillow in the world.' Is that the magic sauce for a good sleep? And is that what we are missing in our work lives? Touché!
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)