Abstract
For most people, work is inextricably linked with home life and the amount, timing, and quality of sleep. While the recent novel coronavirus pandemic changed work practices for billions of people, this global change had already started with more and more people working at home, sometimes morning, evening, and night, under increasingly uncertain employment conditions. In addition, our work, home life, and sleep can compete for time, particularly in the face of second and third jobs, flexible schedules, night shift work, unstable work practices, and the emergence of the gig economy. The inevitable compromises, when not well-managed, can result in suboptimal sleep, suboptimal work, and suboptimal home life. Even if time for work, sleep, and leisure can be effectively separated, they still all affect each other. For instance, stress at work can affect subsequent sleep, and the quality and amount of sleep, in turn, can affect subsequent work performance. In this special issue of Sleep Health, there are 20 original research articles from 7 countries that describe the enormity of the issues related to sleep health across work settings, populations, and specific conditions; their impact on workplace productivity and worker health; and interventions to help workers, managers, and workplaces address their priorities and manage these competing demands. By recognizing and publicizing the importance of these interactions, we hope to stimulate researchers to develop and evaluate solutions to the global concern of poor sleep degrading work and quality of life and work degrading health, including sleep health.
Contact
Orfeu M. Buxton, PhD, Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA
