university of cambridge

The University of Cambridge introduced sleep workshops for staff as part of its annual Festival of Wellbeing.

The Sleep to Perform workshops, provided by the Sleep School, aim to improve the quality and duration of employees’ sleep and address the impact of poor sleep on workforce wellbeing.

The workshops highlighted the importance of good sleeping habits, provided information on how to recognise and overcome bad sleeping habits, and how to transition to rest at the end of the day.

Around 1,500 bookings were made for events across the two-week wellbeing festival, which ran between 27 June and 8 July 2016.

Employees had the opportunity to take part in a range of activities, including sports sessions, health check-ups, and lectures and workshops on a range of topics, such as dementia and breast cancer awareness.

The festival also included language classes, singing groups, tours of gardens, museums and art collections, and information about the university's support services, initiatives and benefits.

The festival programme offered wellbeing sessions across the university’s sites, with some departments also running their own events, such as free massage sessions.

The university, which employs around 11,000 members of staff, communicated the event via emails, posters, detailed webpages and online bookings. Personal messages from the registry and the pro-vice-chancellor for Institutional and International Relations were also sent out to encourage employees to attend the sessions available at the festival.