💤 9,382 Hours Later: What Thrive Learned From a Month of Better Sleep

Real health impact, powered by Kiwi.

—

👥 About Thrive

Thrive is the all-in-one learning platform that transforms learning, communication, and knowledge sharing for modern teams. With AI sidekick Kiki at the centre of the experience, Thrive makes knowledge accessible, upskilling effortless, and impact measurable — helping 450+ global brands unlock their people’s full potential.

As a company that values performance and culture in equal measure, Thrive partnered with Kiwi to run a high-impact wellness challenge that could energise their people, improve wellbeing, and scale across their growing team.

—

🎯 The Goal

Encourage meaningful behaviour change through one focused challenge:
Improve Sleep Quality (Sleep Score) through better habits, consistency, and recovery.

The Sleep Score is a comprehensive, science-backed metric that combines several factors — including sleep duration, regularity, circadian alignment, and physical/mental recovery. By helping participants understand and improve these areas, the challenge aimed to deliver genuine wellbeing benefits across the team.

—

💡 The Solution: Kiwi’s Sleep Quality Challenge

Kiwi launched a 30-day initiative focused on boosting Sleep Score — a personalised measure of how well your sleep supports recovery and overall health.

Employees were encouraged to track their sleep using phones, wearables, or both. The more consistent and high-quality their sleep became, the higher their score. Kiwi handled data cleaning and standardisation across 100+ health integrations, ensuring fairness regardless of what devices employees used.

✨ What made it work:

• Science-backed Sleep Score captured duration, regularity, continuity, and recovery — all key levers for better rest.

• Wearable-optional tracking kept the challenge inclusive.

• Daily dashboards and leaderboards creating a healthy amount of competition

—

📊 The Results

All improvements reflected real, sustained behaviour change — not just a short-term lift.

• +25 minutes of sleep gained per person, per night
  That’s over 500 hours of extra sleep across the team — the equivalent of 21 full days of recovery.

• 9,382 hours of sleep logged
  Enough for one person to sleep non-stop for 391 days.

• 41 hours of sleep debt erased
  Employees paid back accumulated deficits, improving mood, focus, and cognitive performance.

• Top sleeper maintained a 93% Sleep Score
  One standout achieved nearly perfect recovery night after night.

• Longest single sleep logged: 14 hours 18 minutes
  A true masterclass in deep rest.

—

🧠 What the Data Revealed

One of the clearest insights? More sleep led to better sleep.

Participants who consistently extended their sleep by just 25 minutes per night showed no drop in quality — in fact, their Sleep Scores remained stable or improved. This demonstrates that even modest increases in sleep duration can yield significant benefits without compromising sleep integrity.

This observation aligns with findings from a comprehensive meta-analysis published in Sleep Medicine Reviews, which concluded that improving sleep quality leads to better mental health outcomes, including reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms.

Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health emphasises that good sleep enhances brain performance, mood, and overall health, while insufficient quality sleep increases the risk of various diseases and disorders.

🧠 Why it matters:
More high-quality sleep supports better emotion regulation, cognitive function, and physical recovery. And that’s exactly what Thrive’s team experienced — people reported feeling sharper, calmer, and more energised throughout the day. These insights underscore the profound impact that even small, consistent improvements in sleep can have on overall wellbeing.

—

💼 Business Impact

• More alert, energised teams

• Better daily performance and focus

• Fewer signs of burnout and fatigue

• Stronger engagement around wellbeing and company culture

For a company helping others learn and grow, this challenge reinforced a core truth: you can’t upskill without recovery.

—

✅ Why It Worked

🎯 Clear, health-focused goal
Improving Sleep Score provided a concrete, meaningful benchmark rooted in science.

📱 Inclusive tracking
Employees could use phones, wearables, or both. Kiwi ensured fairness across all devices — no wearable required.

📊 Fun, visible feedback
Real-time dashboards, rankings, and Spotify Wrapped–style graphics kept the energy high and participation consistent.

🙌 Motivation through recognition
Trophies and shoutouts made it feel rewarding — not competitive — and encouraged continued effort.

🔁 Habit-building momentum
The 30-day format gave just enough time to build healthier sleep routines — and the nudges helped make them stick.

—

💬 The Takeaway

Thrive once again proved that with the right structure and support, real behaviour change scales.
The Sleep Quality Challenge helped their people recover better, feel better, and bring their best to work each day.

—
🚀 Want to see what Kiwi could do for your team?
Let’s talk.
📧 halim.yoo@kiwihealth.io
🌐 kiwihealth.io