Sleeptember is The Sleep Charity's annual awareness month to encourage people to sleep better. The 2024 theme this year is 'workplace sleep', with the campaign, #SleepForSafety, fostering businesses ability to avoid accidents in the workplace caused by a slack of sleep.

Did you know...

💤 Fatigue contributes to around 20% of accidents in the workplace
💤 1 in 6 crashes resulting in injury or worse on motorways are fatigue related
💤 Almost 60% of people have experienced their attention span being negatively affected by a bad night's sleep more than once
💤 3/4 of respondents who are in work, state that workplace challenges had caused issues with their sleep over the last six months

What does this mean?

A good night's sleep is vitally important for the mental, physical and emotional wellbeing of all. It is important for businesses to recognize the importance of how the working day can massively impact someone's quality of sleep.

What can businesses do?

• Start to take appropriate responsibility for your employee's health and wellbeing
• Implement a Workplace Sleep Ambassador
• Adopt a cultural change within your business if necessary
• Know your sleep - make use of different training and resources to understand sleep and why it is so important to our health and wellbeing
• Ensure that employees have access to sleep education
• Make sure help and support is readily available and know when to seek help for your sleep or someone else's

Quick wins that you can do right now!

• Create a team event to discuss sleep among staff to discuss the impact that sleep deprivation can have and find out what barriers are stopping them from making changes
• Encourage employees to participate in a sleep challenge where they track and improve their sleep habits
• Share stories - both positive and negative
• Book a lunch and learn, webinar or workshop (We recommend The Sleep Charity!)
• Set times for rest and movement away from desks
• Provide a friendly face and listening ear for employees

It's time to put a snooze on poor ideologies and practices within the workplace when it comes to sleep!