Sleep Awareness Week

Adequate sleep is a key part of a healthy lifestyle and can benefit one’s heart, weight, mind, and more. For Human Resources, this is extremely important to note because if your staff aren’t getting the proper sleep they need, their productivity, happiness, and efficacy at work can suffer immensely.

Many of us have suffered a sleepy, drowsy day at work, but staff who consistently suffer from sleep deprivation can become liabilities. As employees struggle to find the balance between work demands and life, sleep is often the first sacrifice.

Each August, the Sleep Health Foundation runs Sleep Health Week, Australia’s national sleep awareness week. In 2026 it ran from 3 to 7 August, and it is a natural hook for running corporate sleep workshops with your own team. As an employer, there are three big questions worth considering:

1. What effect is the 24/7 workplace mindset having on employee sleep health?
2. Is innovation being checked at the door? Employees who stop innovating may be too exhausted to put in that extra effort to do so.
3. How can you leverage workplace wellbeing programs to promote healthy sleep habits?

Inadequate sleep cost the Australian economy an estimated $66.3 billion in 2016-17, including $17.9 billion in lost productivity through absenteeism and presenteeism, according to the Sleep Health Foundation (Deloitte Access Economics for the Sleep Health Foundation, Asleep on the Job, 2017). Nearly half of all Australians (46%) say poor sleep directly affects their ability to work or study, with adults aged 18 to 44 the most affected (Sleep Health Foundation, Australian Sleep Report, 2025).

Sleep isn’t just about comfort; it’s about health and wellbeing, and it can cost your company dearly if it’s not tended to. Many things can be affected when we do not sleep enough such as:

• Behaviour – aggressive. antisocial, withdrawn, hyperactive, unable to control or regulate behaviour
• Emotion – Moody, depressed, anxious, stressed, uneasy, unconfident, irritable
• Planning – poorly organised, poor time managers, repeating grades, forgets lessons
• Concentration – inattentive, lack of concentration, falling behind in school
• Creativity – not working at full potential
• Problem solving – poor behaviour control and difficulty in social situations
• Complicated thinking – struggles with maths, sciences, languages, abstract concepts
• Motor coordination – less sporty, more accidents, clumsier
• Weight – being obese and overweight is more likely with less sleep
• Health – poorer immune system – sicker more often
• Learning – it is thought that sleep, particularly dream sleep or REM sleep, is necessary or storing certain types of memory, particularly more difficult memories such as mathematical concepts and language.
• “Sleep Hygiene”- this can be defined as habits that can help us to sleep or stop us from sleeping.

There are a few recommendations that you can pass on to your staff to help them develop better sleep habits for a healthier lifestyle (Source):

• No TV in bedroom
• No phones in bed
• No coke/caffeine, high sugar or high spicy food 3-4 hours before bed
• Ensure relaxing and regular bed time routine
• No vigorous exercise 1 hour before bed – it raises the body temperature
• Finish eating 2-3 hours before bed – digestion competes with sleeping – hot milk is OK
• Make sure the bedroom is comfortable (temperature, light, noise)
• Set bedtimes and wake times – try and keep these regular
• Learn to relax  – deal with worry and stress
• Use a sleep diary to check how many hours you are sleeping – Are you sleeping enough?

Take this week to focus on sleep, and reduce the costs to your business and your employees’ health by ensuring your staff are sleeping well.

Holistic Services Group runs workplace sleep programs for Australian teams, delivered onsite or live online, including as a lunch-and-learn session. You can find more about our employee wellbeing programs in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, regional Australia and New Zealand.

• mindful sleep
• sleep