Employers are underestimating a problem that is already showing up in absences and lost productivity
Canadian employees lose an average of 6.9 hours of productive work time per week to poor sleep and miss 3.1 days of work annually for the same reason.
A Sun Life survey found workers with severe clinical insomnia lose 11.8 hours of productivity per week and miss 7.9 days annually.
Yet only 32 percent of employers said poor sleep hurts productivity at their organizations, and just 25 percent identified it as a leading cause of workplace absences.
The gap between what employees experience and what employers perceive is wide.
Twenty percent of Canadian employees meet the clinical threshold for insomnia, and an additional 46 percent show subthreshold insomnia, a status that carries real health risks and can progress to full clinical insomnia.
Only 33 percent reported no significant difficulty sleeping.
One in three workers (33 percent) said poor sleep directly affects their job performance, a share that rises to 72 percent among those with clinical insomnia.
Two employee groups show clinical insomnia rates roughly 1.5 times higher than the general workforce.
Among women experiencing perimenopause or menopause, 33 percent have clinical insomnia and only 13 percent report no sleep difficulties.
Employees managing a chronic condition show the same 33 percent clinical insomnia rate, compared with 19 percent among those without a chronic condition.
Among those with both a chronic condition and clinical insomnia, half reported their condition was not well managed, versus just seven percent of those who sleep well, according to the report.
Younger workers also stand out.
Sun Life's data showed only 29 percent of employees aged 18 to 34 reported no significant sleep difficulty, compared with 43 percent of those aged 55 to 64.
Forty-three percent of younger workers also said they view sacrificing sleep to get ahead as a badge of honour.
Financial and work-related stress topped the list of obstacles to quality sleep, each cited by 27 percent of employees, followed by excessive screen time at 26 percent and mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression at 24 percent.
Among employees with clinical insomnia, those figures sharpened considerably: mental health challenges were cited by 44 percent, financial stress by 43 percent, and work anxiety by 36 percent.
For employees with severe insomnia specifically, access and cost become dominant barriers to seeking help.
Thirty-six percent cited inability to afford resources, and 31 percent said they did not know where to look for help.
Eighty-seven percent of employers and 77 percent of employees agreed that group benefits plans are critical to supporting sleep health.
But two in three employers (68 percent) and employees (67 percent) said they were unsure exactly how their plans could help.
That figure rose to 77 percent among employees with clinical insomnia.
Research from the Mood Disorders Society of Canada cited in the report shows 79 percent of Canadians with mental health conditions report sleep issues, yet many remain undiagnosed or unaware of effective treatments.
Dave Gallson, national executive director of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, said in the report that benefits coverage for supports such as cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and other therapeutic options helps close a critical gap for employees living with chronic insomnia.
CBT-I, which the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health now identifies as the first-line standard treatment for insomnia, targets the thoughts and behaviours underlying the disorder rather than masking symptoms.
Between 70 and 80 percent of patients who follow a CBT-I program see improvement in sleep quality, with many achieving remission from chronic insomnia, according to Morin and Buysse in the New England Journal of Medicine (2024), as cited in the report.
Unlike prescription sleep medication, the benefits of CBT-I are maintained over the long term without risk of physiological dependence, Sun Life noted.
The survey polled 2,000 Canadian employees and 400 employers providing group benefits, and was conducted by Sun Life and Ipsos in December 2025.
