The Sleep and Nature for Employee Well-Being and Success (SNEWS) Lab is a research team in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University.  

Humans need sufficient sleep, contact with the natural environment, and social connections for optimal health and well-being, yet these needs are not being adequately met in society. Our research explores how organizations can foster healthy employee sleep, nature exposure, and social connection/support. 

The ultimate goals of the SNEWS Lab are to benefit workers, their families and communities, the organizations they work for, and the environments surrounding them.
 
To achieve these goals, we conduct industrial-organizational psychology and occupational health psychology research aimed at protecting and and promoting the health, safety, and well-being of working populations. Specifically, we study employee sleep (e.g., consequences of poor employee sleep, methods for measuring sleep in applied settings), organizational strategies and interventions for improving employees’ lives at work and home (e.g., leadership support, schedule flexibility, boundary management), and the built and natural environment (e.g., how exposure to nature impacts employees). 

We use interdisciplinary approaches to connect  industrial-organizational psychology and occupational health psychology with sleep science and environmental psychology. Additionally, our work has an emphasis on the experiences of working populations that are disproportionately vulnerable to issues related to sleep, workplace safety, and work stress.