Workplace wellness has long been recognised as important in employee engagement and retention, and productivity. Yet sleep health remains an area of wellness that doesn’t receive adequate attention. According to Dr Alison Bentley, medical doctor at the Restonic Ezintsha Sleep Clinic, chronic sleep deprivation doesn’t just affect individual health – it undermines workplace safety, decision-making, and overall performance.
Adéle de la Reÿ, Group Marketing Manager at Sleep Group, adds that the ripple effects of poor sleep stretch far beyond the bedroom. “This is why Restonic SA is offering free corporate sleep health screening to businesses in South Africa,” she says.
Restonic SA is the largest bed manufacturer in southern Africa and a founding partner of the Restonic Ezintsha Sleep Clinic, the first facility of its kind in South Africa, which researches sleep and related health issues and provides training to medical professionals.
“For companies serious about performance, resilience, and long-term success, investing in employee sleep health is not just a wellness perk – it’s a strategic imperative,” says De la Reÿ.
Why is employee sleep important?
“Businesses tend to think that employees’ sleep problems are medical issues, but there is a business cost,” says Dr Bentley. By screening employees for sleep disorders, companies can nudge staff to seek out help if they need it.
Dr Bentley says that based on global data modelling, South Africa falls at the higher end of the scale for prevalence of sleep apnoea. “We’re in the top 10 countries,” she says. “Sleep apnoea is when your breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep, normally because your throat closes. This can happen from five times an hour to 125 times an hour (which is the record I’ve seen). In South African working populations, of people between the ages of 39 and 69, 41% have this problem. Think about that: if you have 30 apnoeas per hour, which would be severe, and you get seven hours of sleep, that’s 210 times you get woken up every single night. You’re going to be tired; you’re going to want to fall asleep during the day. You’re not going to be at your most productive.”
Additionally, statistics show that roughly another 10% of the working population is likely to suffer from restless leg syndrome. “We’re looking at a point where you’ve upwards of 50% of your workforce that’s likely to have a problem with sleep, whether through environmental factors (for example, they live in a noisy settlement, where their sleep is interrupted), chronic insomnia (which affects another 10% of people), voluntarily depriving themselves of sleep (for example, by getting up very early to stand in a taxi queue to get to work on time), or because of a sleep disorder. Those are big numbers.”
Sleep deprivation can have short-term consequences, such as poor memory recall, moodiness and increased risk of mistakes or accidents. But it also has long-term consequences, including a weakened immune system, mental health problems, and increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic problems, among other things.
Dr Bentley says that Australian research in 2017 looked at absenteeism due to illness. “They found that you were two and a half times more likely to take sick leave if you had insomnia,” she says. “You were nine times more likely to take sick leave if you had sleep apnoea. You were three times more likely to take sick leave if you were using a sleep aid (for example, sleeping pills). You were three times more likely to take sick leave if you were sleepy during the day.”
To date, the small dataset generated through the Restonic corporate sleep screening initiative indicates that numbers in South Africa might be even higher.
Dr Bentley says that another study in the USA in 2016 looked at the workplace effects of insomnia. “The study estimated the costs to company of people who have insomnia within the workplace,” she says, explaining that the research showed that 15% of the costs (excluding medical costs) were due to days missed from work. But 76% of the costs came from lost workplace productivity. People with insomnia were also more likely to make errors or have accidents, which also cost companies money.
Unfortunately, Dr Bentley says, most occupational nurses (and even most general practitioners) have very little sleep-related training – which is something the Restonic Ezintsha Sleep Clinic is working to address.
Dr Bentley suggests that corporates should recognise the potential impact of poor employee sleep on their bottom line and consider corporate sleep screening as a first step in addressing it.
What is corporate sleep screening?
Corporate sleep screening aims to identify employees at risk for sleep disorders like sleep apnoea or restless leg syndrome, and to guide people towards finding help. This can assist businesses in potentially improving employee health, productivity, and safety.
The Restonic corporate sleep health screening process is a simple, voluntary, guided questionnaire delivered over WhatsApp that takes only 10 minutes to complete. As an added incentive for corporates and employees to participate, Restonic has negotiated discounts with specific retail partners on new bed sets for participants who complete the screening process.
Restonic launched the initiative internally in 2024, in partnership with HealthDocs and Airo Health Care, and then expanded it in 2025 to make it available to interested businesses, starting with two companies on World Sleep Day 2025 (14 March) – BASF Performance Materials and PG Bison.
“The idea is to improve South African sleep data, to help people sleep better, and to improve companies’ performance and thereby the national economy through addressing employee sleep health,” says De la Reÿ.
She encourages interested companies to get in touch by emailing her on [email protected].
For more sleep advice, visit www.restonic.co.za.