Sleep health and the workplace

For most adults, the total time spent asleep or at work together represent the majority of time use in a typical week. Work is necessary to sustain an economy and provide for the well-being of individuals and their families, including essential sustenance and shelter. Ideally, work can also contribute to a sense of purpose, and is an important overall contributor to health and wellbeing. Work can also determine exposure to toxins, pollutants, workplace hazards, psychosocial risks, and other exposures. Work can shape health behaviors, including sleep, which is important to organizations because of its relationship with subsequent employee performance, safety, attitudes, and health. This chapter highlights the impact of increasing work demands and decreasing opportunities for good sleep, microlevel effects of work stressors on sleep, workplace intervention effects on sleep, sleep health and workers’ future health risks, work characteristics as a potential contributor to socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in sleep health, potential reasons for and consequences of racial/ethnic disparities in work-sleep relationship, sleep-related workplace interventions, and future research directions.