employee falling asleep in meetingsemployee falling asleep in meetings

Turns out I had a serious medical issue all along. :) best to see someone and . Who cares? because there might be an employee whos tiered? Same here! Pour a cup of coffee and figure it out. A chef at Mrs Khan Uyghur Cuisine prepares a stir-fry for a customer [Allison Griner/Al Jazeera] But Almira kept trying, testing out noodle recipes and other dishes, until one day she noticed a . I used to fall asleep in class/seminars/group meetings all the time. My project leader falls asleep in our meetings. But she has to be the one to explain whats going on, the LW cant read her mind. Given that shes already telling people that shes going to zip through her four-plus weeks of PTO and then be gone multiple weeks at a time, it feels like the train is so far from the station that you cant call it back, but you also cant have a full-time employee working a part-time schedule. There are plenty of people who go out to lunch at work and have a drink or two. YMMV but I dont think Bob in Accounting thinks a morning greeting is the highlight of his day (unless Bob is OP from yesterday). Im ADHD and when I get bored, I find ways to entertain myself. But that is just plain not true. UTA Of course, sometimes someone actually does fall asleep in a meeting. Always wondered if he was okay! It was witnessed by other people so its not just me. Employees shouldnt be alseep at the job even in boring, dry, long meetings. It sounds like it could be a pretty inappropriate discussion, to be honest. OP1 is so tough. Unlike the scrum team or project team meetings, every last one of the all-hands (department, company) meetings Ive been to couldve been an email, or no meeting at all. Its like the person who in January puts in a leave request for every Friday or Monday before every major holiday leaving everyone else without the chance for a long weekend. An employee who doesnt need the job and can come & go as she pleases must have some influence in the company that makes management unwilling to tell her no. Informational meetings should be few and far between. 1. I love my life. If so, then I get it. Many causes: That can be a sign of a sleep problem called narcolepsy, which causes sudden "sleeping" during day activities and needs treatment. Hear, hear! I think they meant dont start meetings at 11 or 12. However, there's also something extra challenging about meetings that can cause people to nod off. Its not that common IME. I wish it had occurred to me to check with my boss about knitting during in-person meetings, because Im pretty sure she would have been fine with it, but at the time I was just a lowly intern/new hire, and I didnt think it would look professional. Cant win sometimes. Younger workers are particularly prone to falling asleep in meetings, research found . In fact, sometimes I even enjoyed the subtle drama! Finding an effective treatment can be a long process, and what works one day may not work the next. When the temperature rises or falls too far outside of that range, we wake up because neural signals are firing in the brain saying too hot! Im sure this is fairly field-dependent but in mine thats how it goes. Ive tried sleeping more, eating healthier, more coffee, more exerciseit was still a problem. My new employee fell asleep in a meeting I have a new employee who started this week. Workers should be disciplined for sleeping on the job for all cases unless they have a condition that is considered a disability that is protected by state and federal laws.". There are a few people who are great at reading and responding asynchronously, but for the vast majority that is not the case. I don't believe she has any medical condition that would cause this, and I don't see her dozing off at other times. That happens a lot less when we cover it in a staff meeting, have a chance to answer questions, and then follow up with meeting notes. I apologized to my manager, but my work was great, so nobody *could* really complain about it. > the employee needs to stay awake, but its also up to LW to help her do so. If someone is not able to tolerate meetings longer than 30 minutes to the level that they fall asleep, then they are not compatible with a lot of jobs just like my horrible eyesight and my lack of physical stamina excludes a lot of carreers for me. Came here to say the same. When I was being kept awake all night by a cranky baby and maybe functioning on 3 hours of sleep in broken 30-minute chunks, I would totally have fallen asleep in a boring meeting. Meetings I took (and still take) at home, I never had this problem! Removed. Those things make sense to keep in mind. I dont think its ever a bad thing to remind employees you are there to support them as able and appropriate. OP said they were weekly department meetings. Getting excessively sleepy after meals and the mid-afternoon snack was the early warning for a friend who didnt know he was developing diabetes. Hm. No matter what abled people think, unless somebody has explicitly said the words I am not in any way disabled to you, you cannot know for sure if they are disabled or not. iStock Boss Is A Speech In Meeting Room But Employee Falling Asleep Stock Illustration - Download Image Now Download this Boss Is A Speech In Meeting Room But Employee Falling Asleep vector illustration now. I love this description because it is so accurate for me. Employees consider these meetings a waste of time, become . I agree, I found it perfectly clear. I need to be doing something. My body doesnt process vitamin D, no matter how much we give it, so we can only overload on supplements and sometimes it works, sometimes it wont, and if we overload much more the treatment itself will become toxic. It was not really a meeting where everyone was participating it was more like a series of lectures. The LW gets to keep a good employee on terms the employee is willing to take, and the semi-vacancy can be filled. I dont think its unreasonable to expect employees to stay awake during boring stuff, but if youre having a lot of meetings where shes not participating, its also worth considering whether it needs to be a meeting and who needs to attend. And no, Im not dozing off while I work everyday, theres something about the combination of sitting in a meeting room full of people droning on that makes it impossible for my eyelids not to fall a bit. I find it wild that Management are paid their high wages to impact the performance of those they supervise (for the better) and yet so many are taking offense with the idea that this manager could inadvertently be impacting the performance of the supervised employee, but like you said what a world this is. But I'm asleep at . I have witnessed employees falling asleep in meetings as the leader rambles on and on as if to impress everyone with their knowledge. I dont know if this person has a sleep disorder. That can cost a lot. Ive seen the same thing in Germany, though never with a group quite as big as that first time in France. No one ever commented on it. People dont get this. No amount of caffeine helped; my brain just shut off & refused to function until I could get up & walk around. I dont care how phenomenal a persons work is when they are there, if I am left covering for them on top of my own work, which the OP specifically states the rest of the admins have to do. Her job doesnt stop just because she is not there and it is very unfair to expect her co-workers to pick up the slack during her long absences. 2. He knew it was a problem, and heres one actionable solution that worked: I would always give him a task. Went over like a lead balloon in our high cost-of-living area. This was also my go-to strategy for keeping awake during student presentations when I did my college certificate. One case per million people! These meetings are sometimes at 3:00 PM. Shes taking weeks off at a time, unpaid. Logically, LW cannot order the sleepy employee to just stay awake and then not permit the employee to do anything that will help her stay awake, such as attend standing. Running a passive game on my FB on the laptop, I can actually do all that AND pay attention at work, though I only do that when I dont have something active to do because Im a contractor and my job is to NOT have long meetings and do all the little things that come up while the big wigs are in said meetings. The second kind virtually never has any reason to exist other than the person presenting the information lacks the literacy skills to write a coherent memo. As I did, I judged by the look of astonishment on her face that the proper theatrical flourish would be to put my head down again when I finished; which I did. That's just one surprising fact to emerge. OP1, I hope youll consider giving your sleepy employee options if she needs to get up and move around for a minute or something. At the second ever meeting of the group, he stopped mid-sentence to berate the only person in the group that was paying close attention to what he was saying, and was taking notes because she was using a note-taking phone app for that. Id also regularly take notes, so my notepad was a fascinating hodgepodge of badly drawn dragons and detailed notes on the big event that my company was hosting. I have a completely different life now. I am not sure I agree with Alison about the unpaid time off. And of course classes have personalities, and they can be swayed by an influential student: a class with someone visibly performing inattention in the corner will be more inattentive and off-task overall, even if that one student is getting good grades. A solution is imminent! But if the workload is challenged even more when the 22 days they get becomes 40 days, and multiple weeks at a time, you have a problem. I was lucky, I guess, to be a) white and b) smart enough to make it work through college and jobs despite sleeping through classes, literally falling asleep during exams, etc. Why do we get so sleepy and nod off during meetings? Give her permission to stand up, walk around, keep herself physically engaged and see if that helps her stay mentally engaged. The problem isnt giving a general greeting to the office as they walk by, its stopping at each person individually to say it thats the issue. This used to be me. Is the tone dry? If the person is otherwise performing their job functions, cut them some slack. Called sleep apnoea, it is a condition where breathing stops for a while during sleep; the most common being Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA). And at least personally for me I would add something about not being able to in order to make sure her co-workers are also able to use their vacation time (because I wonder if some of the grumbling is because others arent able to travel or take off more than a day at a time because shes always taking extra time off?). For one of them, I was literally the person opening the building up. Sounds to me as if the company might be ok with these absences but her coworkers are burdened. In my defence, it was really warm and I wasnt well. So I have had *so many times* where I spend Sunday just doing regular normal things like running errands, hanging out with my friends, going to the park, etc, and I feel completely fine while Im doing it, and then on Monday morning I wake up in so much pain that I literally cannot leave my bed. As it turned out, I am a diabetic and probably have been for years. Everything was normal. (Caveat that all of this excludes FMLA leave!). Drinking coffee is the most common method to fight drowsiness in the workplace. So he didnt really have anything to complain about, other than appearances. But Im sorry the number of people who seem to think *sleeping* during a meeting is fine is a little ridiculous. Here we are earnestly discussing the importance of appearing to be awake while sitting in a chair being droned at for an hour. update: if I quit my job when everyone else is quitting, the organization will fall apart, rude instructor comments on our food choices, husband wont wear noise-canceling headphones at home, and more, coworker is always late because she stops for coffee, my boss told me to change my ringtone, and more, updates: unhappy with changes at work, asking to unblock a website, and more. Im off the anti depressants and mood stabilizer; off the anti-anxiety meds (turned out, when I feel anxious I am sleepy). That is pretty odd for any office Ive worked at, and Ive worked at very cordial and fun offices. I was so bored and I was not allowed to do anything to keep myself awake except to drink a beverage. So many tests, bouncing around different physicians (who may or may not be well-versed in sleep medicine), the expense of it all, its an ordeal and a half! that is not realistic. LOL. you have to engage your employees. In college I discovered that additional caffeine (I tried no-doze pills) actually sped up the process. As I dont see a complaint from OP that anyone else is falling asleep in these meetings though, I am fairly convinced its not a universal problem but some issue of the employee and then its on her to explain that she would be tremendously helped by having the meetings at a different time or being able to bring her knitting or having the temperature lower / higher or whatever. I urge people to get a medical workup if youre newly sleepy a ton. How is the employee taking this extra time? Now its happier, though I still have a hard time with what is normal and what I should expect of myself/what regular people are capable of. I do wonder whether the employee needs to be in the meeting. But what you are expecting is not realistic in a lot of places. The good news is that a sleep disorder diagnosis will get you wonderful drugs like modafinil that will help you to stay awake. Also, how long is their commute?. No amount of let her know this is a Serious Issue would have made a difference. My boss asked me what my plan was if someone had pictures. And it didnt help. I have the same problem. Then continued to work throughout the meeting. Standing only kind of works, but its better than sitting. Interesting. And I had no idea. If Im in a warm environment with little ability to move, Im going to snooze despite my best efforts. All these are pretty inappropriate for OP to suggest though. Is this person having a liquid lunch? I am really curious if OP2s company has any sort of actual policy on this. Being allowed (in meetings where this was possible) to bring yarn projects helped me, too, but I know that isnt always possible and not everyone crochets. Yes. I know how annoying meetings that could be emails are, but not everyone absorbs info the same way. We have it right in our employee handbook that its summary termination. I have noticed that one employee tends to doze off at our weekly departmental meeting. Diagnosis and treatment have been life-changing. Since Im remote, Ive discovered what does work for me is playing a musical instrument five minutes of guitar will wake me up sufficiently for the rest of the day. Im not saying I was right to nod off but I couldnt help it and there were so many ways they could have avoided it. The way I figure, if Im having a hard time staying awake, there are likely other members of the meeting who are also struggling to stay engaged, just less obviously. I have narcolepsy and wasnt diagnosed until I was 35. (Note: It was something insane as, essentially, this was that Bosss buzzword of the year.) I am sure this employee is not falling asleep AT the OP. Agreed, the manager could say maybe you should see a doctor and find out if theres a medical issue but no more specific than that. LW can say stay awake but not then permitting employee to try something new isnt going to solve the problem. It is not sheer will power for this person to stay awake. This question gave me a chuckle. Openly as possible. The one that worked for me the most was doodling- Id bring two or three colored pens and make very intricate doodles. I never fall asleep in meetings anymore. I fell asleep in a one-to-one at college once. He is a history buff (can be a bit insufferable, honestly), and he made an 86. Your eyesight being so bad that you literally cannot perform a job-related task is not the same as getting sleepy during a long meeting. Yeah, Ive seen this in Europe, particularly. I have an invisible disability, and I know the pain of I dared to try doing some light house cleaning or having a tiny little bit of fun over the weekendnow its Monday morning and I feel like shit. I said no phones! Dont know what ended up happening to that group, I never went back. It is my experience that if I actually need people to pay attention, ask valuable questions, and respond / engage meaningfully, it probably has to be a meeting. Even the fact that its only during this meeting that the employee falls asleep doesnt mean its not due to a medical condition. Ive been this person pre-pandemic and I got yelled at for it all the time. They are underdiagnosed, undertreated, and the stigma of being the person who falls asleep is very, very strong. It started at 10am , 3 hours away from where I live and work . However, very few of my coworkers know the full story, because I dont talk publicly about having this condition for a lot of reasons (none of which I want to debate, thank you). Everyone yelling, Good night, John Boy. On your side it felt like a one-time accommodation; on her side it felt like everyone at work acknowledging that more time off was fine so long as she was fine with it being unpaid, which she is. Be very careful with the sleeping issue. Even then, it can take time and enduring some negative side effects to find treatment that works. Falling asleep is a fairly natural response to dry, long meetings. For some people, alcohol makes them sleepy. My labs were normal. must take action to get less hot! or too cold! I need to think further about how to manage this, but for now at a minimum, if you are talking about how you think things should be rather than how things are, I request that you note that in your comment. managing an employee who lies, I was the only one carded at a business lunch, and more, Our employee takes lots of leave without pay. Does she need to be in person or can she phone/zoom/skype in so she can do something to keep herself awake off camera? Just want to share something that happened to me about a decade ago. I used to work next to a guy who fell asleep at his desk on a daily basis. Bring us up the day before so no one had to wake up at 4 am to get there , break us into smaller groups that allowed for interaction and participation for at least part of the day rather than have one person at a time lecture to all 200 of us. Frankly this is embarrassing and I want to apologize to anyone working in retail, healthcare, construction, landscaping, any other physically or mentally exhausting jobs.