Whether it’s fatigue from looking after children, chasing a side hustle or staying up late playing video games, most people turn up to work tired at least occasionally. But at what point does dozing off at work threaten a person’s ability to hold down their job?
The answer comes down to the nature of the job, how it affects a person’s ability to do their work, the reason for the fatigue and whether it happens repeatedly, according to experts.
In 2023, a Brisbane man was dismissed from his job for serious misconduct after being found asleep while on duty at a detention centre in Queensland.
His employer said in the termination letter that he had failed to maintain a state of readiness on duty, compromising safety and neglecting his duties.
“You failed to maintain safe work practices and take reasonable care of your own and others’ health and safety by way of your actions,” the letter read. It detailed two instances on the same day where the man was asleep, including one in which he failed to notice two detainees entering the room and taking items from a table less than a metre away, and another in which he did not respond to a colleague standing next to him until he was tapped on the shoulder.
The letter alleged the man wore sunglasses to prevent CCTV capturing his eyes being closed. “Specifically, you put on sunglasses when entering an indoor area,” the letter read. “You failed to maintain a constant line of sight of a vulnerable detainee you were responsible for monitoring.”
Central Queensland University fatigue and organisational psychology professor Drew Dawson said both employees and employers have responsibilities to minimise safety risks in the workplace.
“Employees generally have a statutory obligation to report workplace hazards,” he said, which can include notifying their boss about feeling tired if that is likely to affect their safety or that of others.
The employer, which should have a workplace policy on fatigue, can then decide how to handle the situation. If an employee comes into work fatigued constantly, “that can be a basis for a conversation”, Dawson said, with many employers adopting a “three strikes and you’re out” approach. “You might get a warning, then a notice in writing before being dismissed,” he said.
While in the Queensland man’s case, the nature of his job meant there were serious safety implications from falling asleep, Dawson said it was generally harder to dismiss someone for non-safety reasons.
“An employer can’t usually just say, ‘I caught you falling asleep so you’re sacked’,” he said. “They’d probably need documentation, and to show it affected the employee’s performance, which can be difficult to measure.”
Workplace Law managing director and principal Athena Koelmeyer, however, said performance in most jobs could be measured to some degree, and that anything that affects a worker’s output could be grounds for terminating their employment.
“The Fair Work Act requires employers to give employees a reasonable opportunity to improve their performance, but there is an expectation that workers to turn up ready, willing and able to do their job,” she said.
“If you’re making mistakes or sleeping at your desk, you might find yourself in a wider performance discussion,” she said. “It could be a warning or slap on the wrist at first, but you may also end up losing your job.”
However, Koelmeyer said most employers – and the Fair Work Commission, which oversees unfair dismissal cases – would usually consider personal circumstances.
“Lawyers’ favourite word is ‘reasonable’,” she said. “If you’ve got one-year old twin toddlers who are teething, the employer will probably understand that for some time, you might be turning up to work a bit run down. But if you’re staying up playing [a video game like] Call of Duty with mates, that’s just unreasonable.”
While the detention centre guard acknowledged he was “seemingly sleeping sitting on a sofa on duty”, he disagreed that it was “serious misconduct and negligence”. He claimed his actions were not wilful, deliberate, negligent or dishonest, and said they resulted from medical conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder.
However, the man acknowledged he had not disclosed that he was also working another job at a hotel and conceded he had made the wrong choice by not asking for someone to relieve him given his fatigue.
In her decision, Fair Work Commission deputy president Theresa Dobson said the PTSD explanation was not true, and that the CCTV footage showed there was “intent to have a sleep and … to hide it as much as possible”.
“[He] put on his glasses, sat in the most comfortable sofa, lay back with his arms across his chest and his feet up and did not move for 24 minutes despite numerous people coming and going from the room,” she said.
Dobson cited a previous case in which the arbiter at the time said, “issues such as the frequency and duration of sleeping, the nature of the work being performed and the responsibilities of the employee concerned, will all be relevant”, when considering whether sleeping at work constituted a valid reason for termination.
Dobson said the detention centre was “a place where circumstances can quickly escalate into situations with serious danger to staff and detainees”, and that falling asleep while tasked with monitoring a vulnerable detainee was “egregious”.
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Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberra’s Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.