CNN – A restless night may leave you feeling tired at work, but what if your job is the very thing disrupting your sleep?
People with highly sedentary jobs — accounting for 80% of the current US workforce — face a significantly higher risk of insomnia, according to a new study published January 7 in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.
“We already know sleep is as close as a magic bullet that we have for employee productivity and well-being, yet the way job design has changed work endangers sleep health,” said Dr. Claire Smith, lead study author and assistant professor of psychology at the University of South Florida.
How job design impacts your sleep
The research, which analyzed data from more than 1,000 workers over a 10-year period from the national Midlife in the United States study, examined how job design impacts employees’ sleep patterns.
Job design, as defined by the study, includes elements such as the amount of technology used at work, levels of physical activity and work schedules, specifically the time of day when employees work.
Participants reported their sleep habits at the beginning of the study (2004 to 2006) and again a decade later (2013 to 2017) using six sleep health indicators: sleep duration, regularity, insomnia symptoms, napping habits, daytime fatigue and the time it took to fall asleep.
To track changes in sleep patterns over 10 years, the study identified three distinct sleep health categories: good sleepers, insomnia sleepers and catch-up sleepers.
Good sleepers are those individuals who exhibit optimal sleep patterns, which include regular sleep cycles with low levels of daytime tiredness.
Insomnia sleepers experience short sleep cycles and higher levels of daytime fatigue.
Catch-up sleepers fall between these two groups and often rely on naps or extra weekend sleep to compensate for irregular sleeping patterns …
