The Client
EXOS / Google
The Situation
The Google work culture is highly performance-focused, with individuals and teams delivering exceptional innovation, creativity, and commitment. This focus on achievement can come at the expense of optimal work-life balance and adequate sleep.
Exos, Google’s corporate health and wellness vendor partner, is focused on providing support, resources, and education to help Google employees invest in healthy lifestyles. To help achieve this, they partnered with Kristen Rainey of Northstar Sleep School.
Our Approach
In partnership with Exos, Northstar Sleep School led a 6-week sleep course in August and September of 2021 for 700+ Google employees globally. Northstar Sleep School created weekly course modules (including an overview on sleep trackers) that Google employees watched each week, and then facilitated all of the course’s small group Zoom sessions each week.
Workshop Goals
How do rest and recovery impact athletic performance, mental performance, and overall health?
What steps can individuals and teams take today to start improving sleep?
The course answered these questions by focusing on areas that would deliver the greatest impact.
- Thriving in their work and lives rather than just surviving
- Making the most of one’s time within the constraints of demanding schedules
- Managing the blurred lines between work and life when working remotely on variable schedules
- Evolving the collective focus and norms for the team on not sleeping enough/sacrificing sleep — versus prioritizing sleep
- Learning how to optimize their own sleep quality and quantity within their existing schedule and lifestyle constraints
Workshop Logistics
- 6-week course held over Zoom with weekly recorded content modules
- Small group breakouts each week, facilitated by Kristen Rainey
- 700+ participants
The Results
Google employees gained a significant perspective shift in the importance of sleep for their overall health and wellbeing, as well as their work performance. They also gained practical, actionable tools and strategies to help improve their own sleep, beginning with everyday habit shifts.
