Dr. Alison Bentley, director of the Sleep Health Centre at the Restonic Ezintsha Sleep Clinic, explains that poor sleep affects mood, cognition, memory, reaction time, metabolic health, mental health, immune function, and long-term disease risk. So why is business not paying more attention to sleep?
Discovery Health certainly is and has just published a new white paper, The Sleep Factor. Analysing 47 million sleep records, it shows that South Africans are sleeping less, spending less time in deep and REM sleep, and following increasingly irregular sleep-wake patterns. The paper also underscored that poor sleep predicts higher rates of chronic illness, impaired cognition, reduced productivity, and an elevated risk of motor-vehicle accidents.
Cassi-Lee Rubin, a neuroscientist and head of mental health risk at Discovery Health, says the effects of poor sleep are immediate and far-reaching. “A single night of poor sleep can lead to increased anxiety, compromised attention, and a measurable reduction in the brain’s ability to regulate emotion,” she says, adding that chronic sleep loss disrupts hormonal balance, homeostasis and immune function. “Over time, consistently poor sleep impacts our cognitive health by disrupting our prefrontal cortex’s executive functions, such as decision-making, planning, and judgement.”
Bentley’s corporate sleep screening work (assisting organisations to identify employees who might be struggling with sleep disorders to connect them to the right support), includes another startling fact: South Africa ranks among the top 10 countries in the world for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnoea.
“In South African working populations, of people between the ages of 39 and 69, 41% have this problem,” Bentley says. Chronic insomnia affects roughly 10% of adults, and restless leg syndrome another 10%. She estimates that upwards of 50% of the workforce potentially has a sleep problem.
More than a personal problem
Organisations have made significant investments in wellness programmes, leadership development, and mental-health tools. But while we now understand the value of exercise, mindfulness, and good nutrition, we still treat sleep as a personal matter. A growing body of evidence shows that chronic sleep deprivation undermines safety, decision-making, mental health, and productivity at scale.
What if business viewed sleep as a foundational performance variable? Could this be a factor that not only improves individuals’ lives profoundly, but also employee engagement and productivity?
‘Fix the water, not the fish’
Alon Lits, the co-founder of October Health (which partnered with GIBS to produce the GIBS/October Health Workplace Wellbeing Index), believes that individual wellbeing cannot be separated from organisational culture.
“One of the key findings in both releases of the index is that throwing benefits at employees – without addressing organisational culture, without addressing trust and leadership – doesn’t solve the problem of individual wellbeing,” he says. He recalls a chief human resources officer using a metaphor that stuck with him to explain this: “Culture is not about fixing the fish, but the water.”
It is a powerful way to think about sleep. Individuals cannot function well in an environment that chronically erodes rest. Unpredictable working hours, poor workload management, micromanagement, and low psychological safety all work directly against healthy sleep patterns.
This aligns strongly with the findings of the 2025 Workplace Wellbeing Index, where employees rank a “healthy, sustainable culture of work” and “leadership that prioritises wellbeing” as the two most important drivers of workplace wellbeing. Yet the benefits companies most commonly offer – fitness events, healthy snacks, team-building – sit far lower on employees’ priority lists. Employees want predictability, flexibility, and respect for time boundaries, while organisations continue to invest in activities rather than conditions. Companies are feeding the fish, but the water remains unchanged.
From reactive to proactive wellbeing
Both the 2024 and 2025 editions of the GIBS Workplace Wellbeing Index emphasise the need to move from reactive care (stepping in when people reach breaking point) to proactive, preventative support.
Discovery’s research reinforces this point. Rubin points out that sleep (like most health habits) is a modifiable behaviour that responds well to the right inputs. “Our research confirms that meaningful, sustained improvements happen when people consistently enhance and maintain their sleep duration, regularity, or quality for roughly 10 weeks – the period it takes to form a durable sleep habit,” she says. “This insight has shaped our approach to helping the people we serve to achieve better sleep health. In 2026, Discovery Health Medical Scheme will introduce rewards for tracking and improving sleep, while integrating sleep behaviour into its Personal Health Pathways platform.”
Discovery now integrates sleep into members’ precision healthcare journeys, offering rewards, personalised guidance, and early detection of sleep disorders. “This not only improves health outcomes but also reduces downstream costs and disease burden,” Rubin says.
The health nexus: sleep, nutrition, fitness and stress
Sleep does not exist in isolation. Stress, mental health, physical health, financial anxiety, workload, diet, alcohol use, screen exposure, and family circumstances all influence sleep quality and duration.
The 2025 Workplace Wellbeing Index highlights this interplay, noting that financial stress remains one of the strongest negative influences on wellbeing. Workload pressure, poor work design, and lack of clarity also feature prominently. These stressors are well-established predictors of short, irregular, and low-quality sleep.
Bentley adds that inadequate sleep interferes with growth hormone, memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and metabolic processes, such as glucose control. She likens sleep to servicing a car. If you don’t pay attention to regular services and maintenance (sleeping properly), over time, the body “breaks down faster,” with potential earlier onset of chronic disease and reduced productivity.
Once disrupted, sleep can also trigger its own negative cycle. “If my little boy tries to go to sleep and he’s stressing about falling asleep, he probably won’t,” says Lits. “It’s no different for adults.” Anxiety about sleep becomes another obstacle to sleep.
The insight is simple: good sleep is not an isolated behaviour. It is the by-product of a healthy personal and organisational ecosystem and, if sleep is protected and obtained, it forms the foundation for future health and enhanced productivity.
The sleep sacrifice myth
Despite the science, many leaders still believe (or model) that sacrificing sleep signals commitment. Experts agree this framing is both outdated and counterproductive.
Lits explains that how we talk about sleep matters, suggesting we reframe sleep not as a sign of weakness or lack of ambition, but as a strategic accelerator. He gives the example of an executive who is a classic high-achiever. “If I say, ‘If you continue to work this way, you’re going to burn out’, they’ll probably ignore me. But if I say, ‘If you take the night off and get an early night, you’ll be able to perform at a 20 percent higher level tomorrow,’ they’re more likely to listen.”
This framing is also consistent with the growing emphasis on mental fitness – the set of habits, skills, and psychological tools that support resilience, creativity, and sustained excellence. Sleep becomes an essential form of performance infrastructure.
How employers should think about sleep
“Sleep should be top of mind for both employers and employees,” says Rubin. “Poor sleep not only impacts productivity, absenteeism, and presenteeism, but it also exists in a bidirectional relationship with our overall health and wellbeing. This is particularly relevant when we look at mental health. Consistent poor sleep increases the likelihood of developing mental health conditions, while those with diagnosed mental health conditions are more prone to poor sleep or sleep disorders.”
Discovery suggests employers prioritise systems that enable early detection and support of mental health concerns among their employees. “Leaders should be empowered to understand the signs and symptoms of diminished mental wellbeing too, such as exaggerated emotional reactivity, reduced stress tolerance, persistent low mood, impaired cognition, and social withdrawal – and be equipped to take steps forward,” says Rubin.
Of course, as Lits notes, sleep cannot be policed. Nor should organisations be responsible for employees’ personal routines. They can, however, influence the conditions that make healthy sleep more or less possible.
Four practical strategies to support employees’ sleep
1. Fixing the water: The 2025 GIBS Wellbeing Blueprint identifies strategic moves employers can make. Several align directly with improving sleep:
- Fix the culture/programme mismatch
- Focus on creating psychological safety
- Close the biggest demand gaps (predictability, flexibility, clarity)
- Invest in work design and manager capability
- Create norms that respect time off
These are the same environmental factors Bentley and Lits identify as prerequisites for good sleep.
2. Raise awareness and visibility
Education is a starting point. October Health offers content, courses, and challenges designed to help people understand and improve sleep. Discovery’s Vitality Sleep Score gives individuals a clear view of their sleep trajectory. The Sleep Health Centre [TO1] offers corporate sleep screening, which alerts people to underlying sleep disorders and the processes to diagnose and manage those disorders.
These tools reduce the “unknowns” around sleep, shifting it from a vague aspiration to a measurable behaviour that can be improved.
3. Provide resources
Organisations should respect that (as Lits puts it) “people are adults”. Organisations cannot force adherence, but they can enable it. Access to mental-health support, guidance on sleep hygiene, reduced after-hours communication, and clear workload norms all support better rest. Bentley suggests organisations can also guide workers to valid, South African based, medically reliable resources such as podcasts (e.g. Power of Sleep with Restonic) or websites for more information.
Lits stresses that personal responsibility remains part of the equation: “Ultimately, it’s up to the individual to take ownership. The organisation is responsible for the water and for giving employees access to resources.”
4. Build the business case
If empathy is not enough, economics should be. Bentley says data from research in Australia suggests that insomnia costs companies around R54 000 per affected employee per year in absenteeism and presenteeism. Sleep apnoea increases sick-leave risk almost ninefold. Errors and accidents rise too with any situation or disorder creating poor sleep (e.g. shift work), which compound direct and indirect costs.
Discovery’s research shows that improving sleep reduces motor vehicle accident risk by up to 32% and enhances cognitive performance, emotional stability, and health outcomes.
Looked at this way, the cost of ignoring employee sleep is substantial.
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