What if we stopped guessing whether workplace wellbeing support works?
The Workplace Sleep Impact Project is exploring what happens when employees are given targeted, evidence-based sleep education and we actually follow up to find out whether it makes a difference.
Because delivering a workshop is one thing.
Knowing whether people sleep better, understand their sleep better, make changes and function differently afterwards is another.
My wider aim is to help organisations better understand the role sleep plays in employee health, wellbeing and workplace functioning, while building meaningful evidence around the impact of sleep education.
This isn’t about proving that my workshops work.
It’s about finding out what changes, what doesn’t, and whether better sleep education can make a measurable difference.
Phase One: Sleep Through the Perimenopausal & Menopausal Years
The first phase of the Workplace Sleep Impact Project focuses on sleep through the perimenopausal and menopausal years.
Sleep disruption can have a significant impact during this stage of life, and the reasons for it aren’t always straightforward. Hormonal changes can play a part, but so can stress, caring responsibilities, work, mental load, health, relationships and everything else happening at this stage of life.
Phase One combines targeted sleep education with research over a three-month period to explore a simple but important question:
Can better sleep education make a measurable difference?
Participating employees are invited to complete a baseline questionnaire before attending my Sleep Through the Perimenopause & Menopausal Years workshop.
Research participants are then followed up immediately after the workshop, at four weeks and again at three months.
I’m looking beyond whether people enjoyed the workshop.
I want to understand what happens afterwards.
What changes?
What doesn’t?
What do women actually use?
Do they understand their sleep better?
Do they feel better equipped to support it?
And does any of that translate into meaningful changes in sleep, wellbeing and how they function at work?
For employers
Organisations taking part pay for the delivery of the sleep education workshop.
For organisations joining this first cohort, I am funding the research, data analysis and impact reporting myself.
Research participation is voluntary. Individual responses are kept confidential and findings provided to employers are aggregated and anonymised.
Where there are enough research participants to protect individual confidentiality, participating organisations will receive their own impact report showing what the data tells us about their workforce at baseline and what, if anything, changed following the intervention.
This means you’re not simply putting on another wellbeing workshop and hoping it helped.
You’re contributing to research designed to find out.
The findings from participating organisations and individual participants will ultimately be brought together to create a wider Phase One report.
My hope is that this gives us useful evidence about the role sleep education could play in supporting women through the perimenopausal and menopausal years, both in and outside the workplace.
Why I’m doing this
I’ve spent years educating people about sleep.
Again and again, I’ve seen how much difference it can make simply understanding why you’re struggling with sleep rather than being given another list of things you should and shouldn’t be doing.
But positive feedback after a workshop isn’t enough for me.
I want to know whether education actually creates change.
Does somebody still remember and use what they’ve learned four weeks later?
Has anything changed three months later?
And if it hasn’t, that’s important to understand too.
I want employers to have better information about where sleep fits within workplace health and wellbeing, rather than expecting them to invest in support without really knowing what happens afterwards.
My working hypothesis is:
We don’t just have a sleep problem. We have a sleep education problem.
The Workplace Sleep Impact Project is my way of putting that to the test.
Join Phase One
I’m currently inviting organisations to join the first cohort of the Workplace Sleep Impact Project.
If you’re responsible for HR, People, Employee Wellbeing, Occupational Health, Women’s Health or workplace health and would like to explore bringing Phase One into your organisation, you can read the full project brochure below.
To View the brochure https://canva.link/wfx18v1tzlho1n0
Or, if you’d rather have a conversation first, please get in touch with me directly.
I’m very happy to talk you through what I’m doing, what taking part involves and whether it would be appropriate for your organisation.
Nicole Ratcliffe
The Workplace Sleep Coach
Sleep Educator | Workplace Wellbeing Consultant | TEDx Speaker
