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Sleep is the foundation of all wellbeing. Yet, good quality, restorative sleep, is perhaps the most elusive of dreams for many, especially those in health and social care. The long hours and the shift work, often combined with caring responsibilities, pain, menopause and stress, create the chronic tiredness that has been somehow normalised as ‘a part of the job’.

We need to stop – normalise it we must not. We now know that this approach comes at a significant cost to wellbeing, performance and even staff retention.

A recent programme we led together with Health & Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and The Sleep Charity, proved that this state of affairs isn’t something we have to get on with as a part of life.

By focusing on a simple, yet often overseen factor of sleep posture, and by bringing together the A-team of partners across health, charity and industry, our programme demonstrated that meaningful and measurable improvements in sleep quality are possible, even when sleep duration itself cannot be increased (which is normally the sad reality).

The problem: no one is sleeping

At the start of the trial programme, more than 300 NHS and social care staff reported widespread sleep disruption, as well as a range of sleep issues. Most described the things we all unfortunately know too well: chronic tiredness, difficulty staying asleep, discomfort in bed and pain that interferes with rest. We specifically targeted the groups we knew had it worst in terms of sleep inequality: menopausal women, informal carers and shift workers. Find yourself in one of these, on top of working to keep the rest of us healthy, and your sleep will suffer. Find yourself in two or three, and I think you’re a superhero, because to function with the poor quality of sleep that’s symptomatic of these groups, you must actually have some kind of special powers.

While many workplaces offer sleep support, it is normally focused on sleep hygiene, stress management or fatigue awareness, very little has previously been done that concerns the physical aspects of sleep.

Sleep posture, which is concerned with the position you sleep in and what you sleep on, is rarely addressed, despite its impact on pain, night-time disturbance and broken sleep.

This gap is the basis of our intervention.

The solution: simple, actionable and effective

The trial programme centered on education and personalised support. No medication or complex behavioural change. Participants attended a general introductory workshop, followed by one-to-one consultations focused on how to improve their sleep. They also received a Levitex Sleep Posture Pillow, but only once the impact of the intervention of sleep posture by itself has been measured.

Crucially, the approach did not focus on achieving the ‘ideal’ number of hours, because well, for most of us it’s unachievable. Instead, it focused on improving the quality of sleep that you already do get. This is really crucial and was a key success factor. Most participants’ routines could not easily (or at all) change.

Two weeks post consultation, 75% of participants reported tangible improvements in sleep quality. There were fewer nighttime disturbances, reduced pain on waking and an improved feeling of restfulness reported.

The proportion of staff waking up feeling tired dropped dramatically. The stats are so bewildering, that they might seem unbelievable: at the start of the project, 86% of participants reported ‘bad or fairly bad’ sleep. Two weeks post our intervention, 87.8% rated their sleep as ‘good or fairly good’.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. The intervention’s impact was actually this huge.

Turns out, relatively small physical adjustment can have a huge impact on daily functioning.

The value of collaboration

There is no point repeating all of the teamwork cliches – so just know that the outcome of this trial could not have happened if a single organisation was acting alone.

The Sleep Charity brought their community outreach and sleep hygiene basics.

Levitex shared the sleep posture expertise.

South Yorkshire ICB got involved as a part of their wider commitment to tackling health inequalities within the workforce.

Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber supported the innovation funding process and connected the right people around their shared goal, enabling the project to go forward.

It really is key to note that organisations such as Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber provide more than funding routes. They create the conditions for experimentation, evaluation and shared learning across systems. By supporting locally driven innovation and connecting it to national priorities, they help ensure that effective ideas do not remain isolated pilots.

In this case, that support helped establish what is believed to be the first NHS programme to focus specifically on sleep posture as a route to improving sleep quality.

What comes next?

This programme challenged the assumption that poor sleep is inevitable for those working in demanding roles. Education empowered participants to understand their own sleep, identify provoking factors and make changes that felt achievable, rather than overwhelming.

Following the success of the programme, discussions are underway about wider rollout across the NHS and other sectors with similar workforce challenges.

There is also ongoing commitment to peer support sessions, ensuring that staff continue to have access to guidance, shared experience and practical advice.

Our broader ambition is clear.

We need to position sleep posture as a core component of all wellbeing strategies.

Leaders must recognise that simple, evidence-based interventions, like sleep posture, can make a meaningful difference, even in the most challenging circumstances and most impacted groups.

Poor sleep is no longer something we can write off as ‘the normal’, but rather something we can actually meaningfully help with.