Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity^®—actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.  You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)

INTEGRITY IDEA: Support Sweet Sleep at Work

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is not about encouraging employees to sleep on the job—it is about implementing workplace practices that encourage and enable employees to get adequate and restorative sleep at home.

It recognizes that sleep deprivation is a chronic problem in the United States, that work practices can be a major contributor, and that inadequate sleep can harm physical, mental, and emotional health. It also recognizes that an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing should care about the overall well-being of its employees, because their well-being is critical to human flourishing.

Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization.  Some are helpful ideas to consider as a faithful leader prayerfully discerns the best stewardship of the organization. Others may be important steps in the RENEW/RE-ALIGN/RE-IMAGINE/RESTORE process.

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is in the “necessary” category. God gave his creation the gift of rest, beginning with his own example in Genesis.  A leader can either recognize and honor that gift with practices that “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” or ignore and dishonor it (which just sounds like a bad idea).

Biblical Foundation

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” recognizes that God rested from work, and then gave his creation, including his image-bearers, the gift of rest from work through practices like the Sabbath.  Pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way requires honoring the spirit of that gift.  It recognizes and honors the dignity of each employee as an image-bearing recipient of God’s gift, and it reinforces a culture that values relationships and community.

While we covered “rest” more broadly in the form of vacations, sabbaticals, and the Sabbath in post #175 (Integrity Idea 025: Reward Rest) and wellness more broadly in post #233 (Integrity Idea 057: Waken Wellness), this post is specifically about sleep—not any sleep, but the “sweet” sleep of restoration described in Scripture:

Sweet is the sleep of a laborer. (Ecclesiastes 5:12)

When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. (Proverbs 3:24)

“Sweet” sleep is meant to be a good fruit of work. In Mark 6:31, we see Jesus directing his exhausted disciples to rest. We also see Jesus sleeping peacefully on a boat in the middle of a storm.

And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. (Mark 6:31)

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. (Mark 4:37-38)

In Psalm 127:1-2, the Bible even talks about allowing anxious toil to crowd out sleep—rising early and going late to rest:

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.

The Sleep Problem

We previously discussed the issue of inadequate sleep being a consequence of business as usual breaking work and workers, but this post was inspired by an article on Substack by Anthony Bradley titled “I Haven’t Slept Well in 17 Years.”

Bradley frequently writes about issues facing men and boys in American culture.  Although this article focuses on the impact of inadequate sleep on men, he identifies a number of studies addressing the health impacts of sleep deprivation more generally.

• A Harvard Health article titled “How sleep deprivation can harm your health” explains:

Sleep is essential for the mind and body, which is why chronic sleep deprivation does more than leave you groggy – it can damage nearly every system in your body. From diabetes and high blood pressure to heart disease, mental illness, dementia, and weight gain, insufficient sleep disrupts critical hormonal and metabolic processes that keep you healthy.

It goes on to describe the following “major health risks linked to poor sleep“—diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, mental illness, dementia, and weight gain.

• A British study titled “Long Working Hours and Sleep Disturbances: The Whitehall II Prospective Cohort Study” concluded that “working long hours appears to be a risk factor for the development of shortened sleeping hours and difficulty falling asleep.”

• A 2022 study titled “Sleep, testosterone and cortisol balance, and ageing men” concluded:

“Accumulated sleep debt is widespread in modern society and when accumulated throughout life likely impacts the ageing process, and the development of age-related diseases. . . . Therefore, society should prioritize and value sufficient and appropriately timed sleep.“

• A 2025 study titled “Sleep deprivation as a risk factor for cognitive decline among middle-aged adults” found:

“Chronic sleep deprivation is a significant, independent predictor of cognitive decline among middle-aged adults, particularly affecting memory, executive function and attention. Individuals sleeping less than six hours per night over multiple years demonstrated accelerated cognitive deterioration, even after adjusting for age, education, comorbidities and mental health factors.“

Bradley notes that “nearly one-third of adult Americans report not getting enough sleep.” Recent federal data similarly indicate that 30.5% of American adults average fewer than seven hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.

Sleep and Work

As we highlighted in post #164 (The Brokenness of “Business as Usual”), the book Profit with a Higher Purpose by Peet Van Biljon and James Sprouse does a good job highlighting the significant changes in the demands on American workers over the last several decades, including increased hours and greater stress, as well as the impact of those changes on health, marriages and children):

• The breakdown of the 40-hour workweek for the various reasons they explain.

• Thirty-seven percent of Americans sleeping less than 7 hours, mainly due to work and commuting.

Through its Microsoft 365 applications, Microsoft has a unique window into the state of the workplace.  In its most recent Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft reported on what it calls the “infinite workday”:

• The average employee receives 117 e-mails and 153 Teams messages daily and sends or receives 50 messages outside core business hours each day.

• Meetings after 8:00 p.m. are up 16%, 29% of workers are checking their inbox by 10:00 p.m., and 20% of workers check e-mails on the weekend.

The eight-hour workday has its roots in the Industrial Revolution, the labor movement, and Ford Motor Company.

Facing annual employee turnover of over 350% in its factories, Ford announced in 1914 that it would adopt an eight-hour day for men (women followed in 1916). In 1926, Ford became one of the first American companies to adopt the five-day, 40-hour workweek for factory and office workers.  Ford wrote:

We found that we could get at least as great production with three shifts of eight hours as with two shifts of nine hours. The men were fresher and more efficient, and the machines were kept running practically 24 hours a day.

Ford’s data and experience over 12 years indicated that reducing the workday from ten to eight hours and the workweek from six to five days increased total output. Ford’s observations about productivity have been confirmed by subsequent scientific studies.  One study published in the Journal of Occupational Health in 2020 noted:

Numerous studies have been conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations, and the military. These studies support the basic notion that, for most people, 8 hours a day, 5 days per week, is the best sustainable long‐term balance point between output and exhaustion. Most workers are able to maintain consistent productivity when working for 40 hours per 5‐day workweek. However, ironically, productivity begins to decline with long working hours. A hundred years of industrial research has proven that longer hours at work do not increase output, except in the short term. Somewhere between a period of 4 days to 2 months, the gains from additional hours of work are diminished by the decline in hourly productivity.

Ford’s motivation was not purely concern for workers. Shorter hours also helped reduce extraordinary employee turnover, made it possible to operate three shifts each day, and ultimately proved good for productivity. But that reinforces an important point: practices that recognize human limitations and God’s design can be both caring and effective.

Sleep and Flourishing

Because people are part of creation, an organization participates in the Creation Mandate in Genesis 1:28 (“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it“) when it promotes the flourishing of its employees, including by caring for their wellness. Caring for people is part of faithfully stewarding God’s creation. Fitness, sleep, nutrition, healing, and wellness are part of preparing and preserving the embodied creatures God calls us to love, serve, steward, and with whom we are called to create.

Taking steps to improve the well-being and flourishing of employees also helps fulfill the Golden Rule and the commandment to love your neighbor.

Faithful leaders want employees to flourish because they want to pursue the Creation Mandate and love their employees as “neighbors” and not just because having healthy and well-rested employees is good for the bottom line.

CONTINUUM: Practices

The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums.  There is nothing inherently magic about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values, and a Re-Imagined Culture.  The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.

Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan, and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is on the Practices Continuum. It involves practices the organization can adopt to reflect its culture while also helping to shape and reinforce that culture. 

COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert

The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations—from Highly Covert to Highly Overt—that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.

Most Integrity Ideas have one place on the scale.  Some can vary depending on how they are implemented.  We identify “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” as Highly Covert (an action that would be taken by a secular company), because every organization should be interested in employees being mentally and physically healthy.

It can be moved toward the Overt end of the Continuum by, for example, explaining the Biblical roots of God’s gift of rest. The words used and the way the practices are introduced can be as Overt or Covert as the leaders prayerfully determine is appropriate.

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees

When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community and Kingdom.

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” principally serves Employees.

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementing “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” will depend upon the nature of the organization and each person’s work. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. A faithful leader considering implementation needs to prayerfully assess ways in which the organization’s work or work culture may be negatively impacting the sleep or sleep patterns of employees.

We think it is helpful to think about implementation in three areas: information, work environment, and boundaries.

Information

Whether or not an organization’s operations are negatively impacting the sleep of its employees, inadequate sleep will impact its ability to be a good steward and glorify God through its work. The American culture of achievement and the marketing message of “more and bigger” can put tremendous pressure on people to work longer and harder to “climb the ladder”, “fit in,” or “keep up with the Jones’s”.  An employee’s sleep deficit might also result from having a “side hustle” to earn more.

Information is one way to begin implementing “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” in any organization.

It is likely that most people do not understand the far-reaching health impacts of inadequate sleep. Employees may be suffering from a sleep deficit simply because they have piled outside activities on top of their work commitments.  Others might be suffering a deficit because work has become an idol or even an escape from another aspect of life.

Providing information and education about the importance of sleep can help employees recognize the importance of getting sufficient sleep.  This could be done through, for example:

• Printed material about sleep and the negative impact of inadequate sleep

• An e-mail, newsletter, or posting on an organization’s intranet

• A lunchtime seminar

Information, however, should not become a way for an organization to shift responsibility to employees while maintaining work practices that contribute to the problem. Education should be accompanied by an honest examination of the organization’s own expectations and practices.

Work Environment

Implementing “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” should involve an honest assessment of the organization’s culture to identify practices or policies that may impact employee sleep. For example:

• Is “face time” expected or discouraged?  Do managers expect to see everyone at work when they arrive and when they leave, whether or not employees have work to do?

• Does lighting in the workplace have a positive or negative impact on employee energy and well-being.  One study found that “47% of employees admit they feel tired or very tired from the absence of natural light or a window at their office, and 43% report feeling gloomy because of the lack of light.” We devoted post #274 (Integrity Idea 076: Let There Be (Better) Light) to the impact of lighting on employee well-being.

• Do the hours an employee works change frequently, potentially disrupting the ability of the employee’s body to establish a sleep rhythm?

• When employees work nights or rotating shifts, are schedules designed and communicated in ways that minimize disruption to their sleep rhythms?

• Are employees given adequate recovery time between late-night work, business travel, or an emergency assignment and the beginning of their next workday?

• Where the work permits, can employees adjust their starting time after an unusually late night rather than being expected to appear at the customary hour?

• Does the organization pay compensation at a level that allows employees to flourish without needing other sources of income?

• Does the organizational culture, whether through recognition, affirmation, or compensation, reward long hours and late nights?

• Do leaders glorify exhaustion, boast about how little they sleep, or treat being constantly available as evidence of commitment?

Boundaries

Implementing “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” should involve an honest assessment of practices or policies that result in a lack of boundaries for work. For example:

• Do employees receive non-urgent e-mails, messages or phone calls or meeting invitations after work hours?

• What do managers consider to be the “workday”?

• Do employees understand whether an after-hours message requires an immediate response, or do they reasonably assume that silence will be viewed as a lack of commitment?

• Do managers schedule early-morning meetings without considering how late employees worked the night before?

• Are employees truly able to disconnect during weekends and vacations, or are they expected to monitor and respond to messages?

One company, Vynamic, received a great deal of press a few years ago regarding its “zzzMail Policy” that discourages e-mails between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and on weekends.  It was enforced with a custom e-mail tool.

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is not about instituting a nine-to-five workday—it is about recognizing the importance of sleep and then taking steps to help workers avoid a sleep deficit. For many organizations and jobs, longer hours or more disruptive hours are sometimes required.

Serving customers, patients, communities, or colleagues with excellence may demand late nights, early mornings, or emergency work. However, working long hours from a heart driven by money, power, success or fear, is “anxious toil“.  Working long hours for the treasures the world values is work done “in vain.”

If leaders elevate work above adequate sleep, they are likely to demand the same of those they lead.  For faithful leaders to “lead faithfully”, they must set an example by “living faithfully”, which requires “working faithfully” and recognizing that adequate sleep is needed for well-being and wellbeing is good stewardship of God’s creation.

Some critical questions are why the longer hours are necessary, how frequently they occur, whether the burden is shared fairly, and whether employees are subsequently given time to recover.

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is both wise stewardship and one way to lead faithfully by curating and reinforcing a caring and compassionate organizational culture aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): Anthony Bradley’s article was eye-opening for me.  I average 6 hours of sleep and have always worn it as a badge of honor.  As a lawyer in a big law firm, there were many nights with less sleep and quite a few with no sleep. I once went three days without sleep (other than catnaps with my head on a conference room table) when closing a deal as an associate. When we closed, I accepted free tickets that night to the New York City Ballet from the partner who was going home to bed, invited a date and proceeded to sleep through the entire ballet.

I thought my ability to function without sleep demonstrated commitment and endurance. I now wonder whether it demonstrated a failure to recognize and honor the limitations God built into me.

ESSENCE:  Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.

INTEGRITY IDEA: Support Sweet Sleep at Work

“Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is not about encouraging employees to sleep on the job—it is about implementing workplace practices that encourage and enable employees to get adequate and restorative sleep at home. It recognizes that sleep deprivation is a chronic problem in the United States, that work practices can be a major contributor, and that inadequate sleep can harm physical, mental, and emotional health. It also recognizes that an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing should care about the overall well-being of its employees, because their well-being is critical to human flourishing. Ecclesiastes declares, “Sweet is the sleep of a laborer.”  “Support Sweet Sleep at Work” is both wise stewardship and one way to lead faithfully by curating and reinforcing a caring and compassionate organizational culture aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities. Faithful leaders want employees to flourish because they want to love them as “neighbors” and not just because having healthy and well-rested employees is good for the bottom-line.

COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): Practices

COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees

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Photo credit: Original image by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash
(photo cropped)