How do you sleep at night?

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Hello and welcome to Working It, the FT’s weekly guide to the workplace and leadership.

My highlight this week was an onstage conversation at the FT with Ruchika Malhotra, author of Uncompete: Rejecting Competition to Unlock Success. It’s a radically different way of thinking about workplaces: by rejecting competition and a “winner takes all” culture, Ruchika shows we can create successful, inclusive organisations where people drop their defensive “silos” and work together with common purpose.

On the day of the US midterm elections, we also talked about the mass corporate retreat from equity and inclusion policies under the Trump administration in the US. On a positive note, the practices Ruchika advocates, such as collaboration and rejecting unhealthy competition, haven’t fallen foul of those edicts. (What will happen inside businesses now? We will keep on top of developments, post-midterms.)

Read on for latest research on how poor sleep impacts us at work 🛌. And in AI Clinic we offer expert advice for someone trying to decide how to divide workload between humans and AI.

Sweet dreams? How poor sleep harms leaders — and staff 🫩

Almost every executive I meet is wearing an Oura ring, Apple Watch or Whoop band. The world’s leaders are certainly tracking their health and wellbeing, so why don’t we hear more about the importance of good sleep for business?

Short answer: sleep problems are “still taboo to talk about at work”, says Els van der Helm, a sleep neuroscientist who advises global businesses on the topic. And that silence conceals a big problem — including for people who think they are getting enough rest. Els cites research that shows “people who slept six hours a night for two weeks performed as badly as people who had pulled an all-nighter”.

Most of us experience tiredness as low physical energy, so we don’t connect it to how clearly we are thinking (or not). And the tiredness is not talked about, either. Els surveyed 1,000 US managers and executives and found that half of senior leaders “hid how tired they were at least four times in the past month”.

How much sleep do we need? Seven to nine hours a night, says sleep specialist Alfredo Rodríguez Muñoz, professor of psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid. “I often say good leadership begins on the pillow.” Heavy workloads and the pressure to be “constantly available” don’t help. He distinguishes stress-related sleep issues from clinical insomnia. “Many people don’t necessarily have difficulty sleeping; they simply don’t have enough time to sleep. They work late, answer emails in the evening and still have to wake up early the next morning.”

Around seven out of 10 of the executives in Els’ recent survey were monitoring their rest; but these people are “just as likely to be short on sleep”, she says. Do wearables actually help at all? Alfredo says they can be useful for identifying general patterns, such as irregular sleep schedules. They are less reliable, he says, “when measuring sleep stages, particularly deep sleep and REM sleep.”

Overall, Alfredo’s concern “is that some people become obsessed with achieving a perfect score, based on measurements that may not be entirely accurate. This can actually create anxiety about sleep, a phenomenon known as orthosomnia.” (Great, something else to worry about 🫣.)

The real impact of poor sleep is underestimated, Alfredo says: “You may feel perfectly capable of making decisions, even when your attention, judgment and emotional regulation have already deteriorated 😱. This creates a dangerous trap: your confidence in your abilities may remain intact while your actual performance declines.” If you are getting five to six hours’ sleep a night, you can’t compensate for the deficit “indefinitely” just by drinking more coffee, he notes. (Sorry, everyone ☕️.)

And what if you’re the unfortunate colleague or direct report with a (secretly) sleep-deprived boss? You may experience them as more irritable than usual. Els says research suggests that “on days after leaders have slept poorly, they were more likely to show abusive behaviours: ridiculing people, putting them down in front of others, or giving the silent treatment. This was true of typically supportive leaders, too, and their teams were less engaged the next day.”

One good night’s sleep can reverse this pattern. How can we make sure that happens? Some tips from Els and Alfredo:

• Establish a clear boundary between work and bedtime. Avoid checking emails before bed and wind down for 30-60 minutes. Dim the lights 💡.
• Do something in the wind-down period you find enjoyable and relaxing 😎 .
• Get bright light outside in the day, ideally in the morning 🌅.
• Maintain a reasonably regular wake-up time 🕰️.

Establish a clear boundary between work and bedtime. Avoid checking emails before bed and wind down for 30-60 minutes. Dim the lights 💡.

Do something in the wind-down period you find enjoyable and relaxing 😎 .

Get bright light outside in the day, ideally in the morning 🌅.

Maintain a reasonably regular wake-up time 🕰️.

• In a nutshell: Many executives don’t protect enough time for sleep, and it affects performance (and team performance). Even six hours a night will cause problems. Seven to nine hours is ideal.
• Want more? Els van der Helm’s Sleep Intelligence report is free to download. Her book, also called Sleep Intelligence, will be published in January. Spanish-speakers: Alfredo Rodríguez Muñoz’s Dormir para Vivir is out now.

In a nutshell: Many executives don’t protect enough time for sleep, and it affects performance (and team performance). Even six hours a night will cause problems. Seven to nine hours is ideal.

Want more? Els van der Helm’s Sleep Intelligence report is free to download. Her book, also called Sleep Intelligence, will be published in January. Spanish-speakers: Alfredo Rodríguez Muñoz’s Dormir para Vivir is out now.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Former Weil partners lawyer up over firm’s wind down: The rapid demise of US law firm Weil Gotshal is an extraordinary tale, and the FT’s legal team is following the story closely — including the move by former partners to recover part of the value of their stakes in the business.
2. Corruption crusader Donald Sherman: ‘If you give a bully your lunch money, they’re going to ask for more’. Ahead of the US midterm elections, Patrick Jenkins interviewed Sherman, head of a lobby group dedicated to exposing corruption in government.
3. Memo to AI: lessons from the rise and fall of secretarial skills: Andrew Hill explores the history of typing and shorthand — what can we learn from their boom and demise, as AI starts to take over our workplaces?
4. Accenture accused of publishing AI paper littered with AI hallucinations: Oh dear. A report from Accenture and IE University in Spain was found to be littered with inaccuracies, Elizabeth Bratton reports. An investigation is under way.
5. What I learnt from reading my teenage diaries: I wrote for the FT’s Life & Arts section about revisiting my university-era self to see if the past helps clarify the future. It is a common practice used in life and career transitions, and I found it mortifying — but useful.

Former Weil partners lawyer up over firm’s wind down: The rapid demise of US law firm Weil Gotshal is an extraordinary tale, and the FT’s legal team is following the story closely — including the move by former partners to recover part of the value of their stakes in the business.

Corruption crusader Donald Sherman: ‘If you give a bully your lunch money, they’re going to ask for more’. Ahead of the US midterm elections, Patrick Jenkins interviewed Sherman, head of a lobby group dedicated to exposing corruption in government.

Memo to AI: lessons from the rise and fall of secretarial skills: Andrew Hill explores the history of typing and shorthand — what can we learn from their boom and demise, as AI starts to take over our workplaces?

Accenture accused of publishing AI paper littered with AI hallucinations: Oh dear. A report from Accenture and IE University in Spain was found to be littered with inaccuracies, Elizabeth Bratton reports. An investigation is under way.

What I learnt from reading my teenage diaries: I wrote for the FT’s Life & Arts section about revisiting my university-era self to see if the past helps clarify the future. It is a common practice used in life and career transitions, and I found it mortifying — but useful.

One more thing . .

We know that tech titans don’t much like talking to the media. (Think of Elon Musk’s *somewhat negative* reaction to an Economist interview a few months ago 👀.) Billionaires can get their message out unchallenged, via sanctioned podcasts and socials. Now, the San Francisco Standard reports, the tech leaders have their own glossy magazine, the modestly-titled Colossus, costing $299 a year for four issues. The article describes Colossus as “Silicon Valley’s in-flight magazine”, one that’s “heavy on access, short on scepticism”. Even the richest people in the world, it turns out, still crave a profile in a print magazine. (Colossus recently ran 15,000 words on Mark Zuckerberg.)

AI Clinic 🩺

The question: We are trying to work out what AI should do in our business, and what to keep ‘human’. The organisation is all over the place, both in terms of skills and attitudes. My starting point, as a way to bring us together, is: what should we be working towards, as a company, in terms of good practice in how we divide work between people and AI?

The answer: Describing your team as “all over the place” with AI is a very accurate summary of the situation in many workplaces. So I turned to Denis Machuel, CEO of the Adecco Group, where the staff have already done a lot of this “who does what?” work. He says:

“Give agents the repetitive, data-heavy work and give people more time to focus on uniquely human tasks like judgment, creativity, trust and relationships. It is essential to involve the people who do the work in the redesign as early as possible — they know best.”

“Give agents the repetitive, data-heavy work and give people more time to focus on uniquely human tasks like judgment, creativity, trust and relationships. It is essential to involve the people who do the work in the redesign as early as possible — they know best.”

A note: Denis, and many other leaders, have started to use the word “hybrid” to define mixed teams of humans and agents (ie it’s nothing to do with where they are all working). He says: “Ensure those involved in redesigning hybrid have the right skills and knowledge. Start by identifying what success will look like and identify how this can be measured. Then test and learn and continuously improve based on the feedback from those involved in the tasks; those receiving a service from the workflow and from the data you are collecting.”

Denis also goes into detail on how his own staff approached the “who does what” question; he suggests going for the “meatier processes” first. In the Adecco Group’s case, it was recruitment. “We started by breaking the process into tasks — together with recruiters, our process experts — then decided where AI removes mundane, cumbersome elements and where human judgment adds value.

“AI agents can handle high-volume, repetitive work: engaging talent pools, pre-screening candidates, scheduling, answering routine questions and supporting onboarding. They can operate around the clock. That frees recruiters to do what people do best: understand motivation, assess potential, advise clients, build trust and make the final judgment. This is not automation for its own sake. It is a redesign of the workflow.”

“AI agents can handle high-volume, repetitive work: engaging talent pools, pre-screening candidates, scheduling, answering routine questions and supporting onboarding. They can operate around the clock. That frees recruiters to do what people do best: understand motivation, assess potential, advise clients, build trust and make the final judgment. This is not automation for its own sake. It is a redesign of the workflow.”

Got a tip, question or dilemma about AI at work? We can help: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

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