Almost one-tenth of employees are being forced to work in their bathrooms whilst remote working, due to either to people sharing studio flats or Wi-Fi connectivity issues.
Research from Hammonds Furniture, specialists in fitted bedrooms found that 9 per cent of staff are now working from their bathrooms whilst working from home. They also found that 70 per cent of workers are witnessing their sleeping pattern being disrupted due to remote working.
Only a fifth (20 per cent) have a home office to work out of, with 21 per cent doing so from their main bedroom. A huge 84 per cent state remote working is having a negative effect on their sleeping patterns.
Women (24 per cent) seem to favour working in the living room whilst men (23 per cent) choose the home office if they have one.
London is the city where remote workers are seeing their sleeping patterns being disrupted the most at 84 per cent, followed by 82 per cent of workers in Bristol and Glasgow and 81 per cent of workers in Manchester.
Lauren Peacock, sleep consultant at Little Sleep Stars said:
Our day-to-day routine plays an important role in helping to anchor and regulate our circadian rhythm – the internal clock which guides us through each 24-hour period, cycling us between periods of wakefulness and sleep. When our circadian rhythm is interfered with, usually, so is our sleep.
Even if we don’t think of ourselves as especially routine-driven, there are usually consistent elements to our day, occurring in a particular order. Activities such as the daily commute and regular lunch time, act as predictable cues for our body-clock and for many people they are no longer part of our day – there are fewer non-negotiables to keep us on a regular pattern.
Those unused to working from home may have a less established structure for doing so leading to less consistency for their body-clock to anchor around.
Hammonds Furniture conducted a survey of 2,000 people to obtain these results.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
