Corporate Wellness Trend for 2017: Put More Emphasis on Sleep
Posted on Wednesday April 12 2017
I'll start by saying this top wellness trend can be found in an article from Adam Sass at Media Planet USA.
What I'll be doing is piggy-backing on his article and diving a little deeper on sleep issues and how you can inform and educate your employees on this topic.
The CDC recommends 7-8 hours of sleep for adults. However, they report over 40 million Americans are getting less than 6 hours a day.
Companies are starting to realize (if they haven't already) that sleep loss can have a huge impact on employee productivity. Not only is productivity negatively affected, but also can affect an employee's mood, memory retention, decision-making and can even lead to onsite work injuries.
A huge factor/issue that leads to sleeping problems are sleeping disorders (ie. sleep apnea). And a major cause for concern is most people don't realize they even have a sleep disorder.
Unfortunately, they almost come hand-in-hand.
So, what's a great and ideal way to educate your employees, bring them awareness, and do it on site at your workplace location????
Bring out the local sleep center to your employee health fair....
These sleep center exhibitors/vendors can be a huge benefit to your employees, educating them on issues your employees never even realize were issues.
Not only that, they can discuss ways to improve your sleep (ie. sleep hygiene) and help improve your employees quality of life. Sleep center vendors/exhibitors aren't just there to hand out pens and flyers.
They can even do an Epworth Sleepiness Scale test for your employees right there on the spot. It helps assess daytime sleepiness and is a way to detect possible problems.
Sleep center vendors/exhibitors can really make a difference.
In case I've spiked your interest and your curious if sleep apnea might be affecting you, check out this article by Amy Marturana of SELF Magazine: 9 Signs You May Have Sleep Apnea
She dives into detail on each point but here is the list from her article:
1. Exhausted all day even though you get plenty of sleep
2. You wake up with headaches
3. You wake up gasping or choking
4. Your bed partner says you snore, choke, gasp, or stop breathing when you sleep
5. You have high blood pressure
6. You experience heart palpitations ("fluttering" in your chest), or your heart is pounding for no apparent reason
7. You have high blood sugar
8. You have insomnia
9. Your mood is all over the place
So, HR managers, health fair planners, and benefits pros - keep sleep issues in the forefront of your mind when selecting vendors for your health fair.
There are multiple sleep apnea/disorder vendors that you can find on HFC's health fair platform. HR managers and health fair planners can review and pick the ones they want with the click of a button.
Don't sleep on this blog post (see what I did there lol) when it comes time to plan your health fair.
Thanks for reading and stay on the look out for other posts on top wellness trends for 2017!
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More About Health Fair Connections (HFC):
Simply put, we offer the only nationwide health fair planning tool that helps HR and benefits professionals automate 95% of the health fair planning process. The coolest part: it's like online shopping for health fair vendors. This tool is completely free to use, and you can get started at any time by clicking here.
- Tim Sackett's (President of HRU Tech) post about HFC: Click Here
- 19 Competitive Advantages for those who use HFC’s Platform to Plan & Organize Health Fairs: Click Here
- HFC made William Tincup's Recruiting Daily List of 100 HR Technologies worth watching: Click Here
- HFC's Competitive Matrix:
Link to large PDF of Competitive Matrix.
