At One Organization, It Pays to Sleep

Do you know how much sleep your employees are getting? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than one-third of American adults don’t get seven hours of sleep a night.

Lack of sleep has been associated with heart disease, diabetes and stroke. While there’s no data directly linking sleep and profitability, sleep is related to many other factors that might impact a business' bottom line, such as job satisfaction, unethical behavior, leadership, work injuries, employee mood and “cyberloafing”—whittling away the day on social media rather than working.

What can you do to help your employees get enough sleep? Integrating sleep programs into your overall wellness initiative is a good start. Recently, Aetna communicated the value that well-rested employees add to its operation by incorporating a unique perk into its wellness program – paying employees to get enough sleep.

The company’s incentivized solution provides employees with $25 for every 20 nights they sleep for seven hours or more. That comes out to $1.25 a night. The reward is capped at $300 a year. For Aetna, adequate sleep is a driver of productivity. In an interview with CNBC, Mark Bertolini, Aetna chairman and chief executive officer said, “You can get things done quicker if people are present and prepared. You can’t be prepared if you’re half-asleep.”

The company’s program collects sleeping time automatically for employees who wear devices such as a Fitbit, but employees can also enter the information into the company system manually. The sleep program, which is part of Aetna’s larger workplace wellness initiative, incorporates social media to get the message out to its employees: tweets remind people of the importance of sleep; a Tumblr post advises employees on ideal sleep posture, and a YouTube video shows stunt performers knocking over coffee cups and struggling to make sandwiches under conditions supposedly similar to sleep deprivation.

Sleep initiatives can be incorporated into a new or an existing workplace wellness program. Wellness Workdays works with employers to develop sleep programs as part of an overall wellness initiative. Contact us to learn more.

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