Giving employees the opportunity to take control over their work schedules may help curb sleep deficiency, according to researchers.
According to Orfeu M. Buxton, professor of bio-behavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, "In the absence of sufficient sleep, we are not as attentive or alert, process information more slowly, miss or misinterpret social and emotional cues and decision making is impaired."
Sleep is vital in human existence. It plays an important role in physical health. In fact, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, having enough sleep per day can protect one's mental health, physical health and quality of life. Sleep helps the brain to work well and become alert which is important in the implementation of work.
Buxton and co-researchers studied whether workplace intervention can improve sleep quality and quantity. Workplace intervention entails higher family supportive supervision and opportunity to become in control of their time spent at work.
They were able to follow and assess 474 employees of a technology firm, wherein half were control while the other half was the experimental group who received intervention. The results of the study were published in the journal Sleep Health.
Apparently, the intervention in the study revolved around decreasing conflicts between work and personal life of the employee. They were allowed to decide on their own, when and where they would work. Also, supervisors would support their personal lives.
In the study entitled, "Reducing work-family conflicts in the workplace helps people to sleep better," workers who participated in an intervention that aims to reduce conflict between work and responsibilities at home which allowed them to sleep an hour more everyday have reported that they slept well than those who were part of the control group.
After one year of intervention, the researchers discovered that employees who were under the intervention have more sufficient sleep than those without any intervention. "We showed that an intervention focused on changing the workplace culture could increase the measured amount of sleep employees obtain, as well as their perception that their sleep was more sufficient," Buxton added.
According to Dr. Lauren Hale, Editor-in-Chief of Sleep Health as reported in Science Daily, "I applaud the methodological rigor of Olson and colleagues' approach to assessing the Work, Family, and Health Network Study's effect on the sleep duration and quality of a real world population. This study demonstrates that interventions unrelated to sleep can improve sleep in the population. Furthermore, these findings serve as a reminder that there are opportunities to deploy innovative interventions to improve sleep."
