No abstract

Healthy employee sleep is important for occupational safety, but the mechanisms that explain the relationships among sleep and safety-related behaviors remain unknown. We draw from Crain, Brossoit, and Fisher’s (in press) work, nonwork, and sleep (WNS) framework and Barnes’ (2012) model of sleep and self-regulation in organizations to investigate the influence of construction workers’ self-reported sleep quantity (i.e., duration) and quality (i.e., feeling well-rest upon awakening, ability to fall asleep and remain asleep) on workplace cognitive failures (i.e., lapses in attention, memory, and action at work) and subsequent workplace safety behaviors (i.e., safety compliance and safety participation) and reports of minor injuries. Construction workers from two public works agencies completed surveys at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. Our results suggest that workers with more insomnia symptoms on average reported engaging in fewer required and voluntary safety behaviors and were at a greater risk for workplace injuries. These effects were mediated by workplace cognitive failures. In addition, workers with greater sleep insufficiency on average reported lower safety compliance, but this effect was not mediated by workplace cognitive failures. These results have implications for future workplace interventions, suggesting that organizations striving to improve safety should prioritize interventions that will reduce workers’ insomnia symptoms and improve their ability to quickly fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night.

We review recent literature in the organizational sciences that uses some form of physiological measurement. We organize our review in terms of the underlying constructs that physiological measures were intended to assess. The majority of such constructs represents stress, health, or arousal, although these constructs are often studied in an attempt to understand a diverse set of other phenomena. The majority of the studies we discuss use peripheral measures of the autonomic nervous system or biological indicators of various physiological subsystems, such as the cardiovascular, metabolic, or immunological. Advances in instrumentation and biological assaying methods have made the use of physiological measures more feasible, and in some cases, affordable for researchers without specialized training in physiology. The significant challenges we discuss mostly concern issues of sampling and timing, as well as the careful selection of physiological indicators to fit the theoretical demands of the research.

Although evidence has been mounting that supervisor support training interventions promote employee job, health, and well-being outcomes, there is little understanding of the mechanisms by which such interventions operate (e.g., Hammer et al., 2022;Inceoglu et al., 2018), nor about the integration of such organizational-level interventions with individual-level interventions (e.g., Lamontagne et al., 2007). Thus, the present study attempts to unpack the mechanisms through which supervisor support training interventions operate. In addition, the present study examines an integrated Total Worker Health ® intervention that combines health protection in the form of supervisor support training (i.e., family supportive supervisor behaviors and supervisor support for sleep health) with a health promotion approach in the form of feedback to improve sleep health behaviors. Using a cluster randomized controlled trial drawing on a sample of 704 full-time employees, results demonstrate that the Total Worker Health intervention improves employee job well-being (i.e., increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover intentions), personal well-being (i.e., reduced stress before bedtime), and reduces personal and social functional impairment at 9 months postbaseline through employee reports of supervisors' support for sleep at 4 months postbaseline, but not through family supportive supervisor behaviors. Effects were not found for general stress or occupational functional impairment outcomes. Implications are discussed, including theoretical mechanisms by which leadership interventions affect employees, supervisor training, as well as the role of integrated organizational and individual-level interventions.

Healthcare is the fastest growing occupational sector in America, yet patient care workers experience low job satisfaction, high turnover, and susceptibility to poor sleep compared to workers in other jobs and industries. Increasing schedule control may be one way to help mitigate these issues. Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we evaluate associations among schedule control (i.e. a contextual resource), employee sleep duration and quality (i.e. personal resources), job satisfaction, and turnover intentions. Patient care workers who reported having more schedule control at baseline reported greater sleep duration and sleep quality 6 months later, as well as higher job satisfaction and lower turnover intentions 12 months later. Workers who experienced greater sleep sufficiency (i.e. feeling well-rested) reported higher job satisfaction 6 months later, and workers who experienced fewer insomnia symptoms (i.e. trouble falling and staying asleep) reported lower turnover intentions 6 months later. The association between schedule control and job satisfaction was partially mediated by greater sleep sufficiency, though this effect was small. Providing patient care workers with greater control over their work schedules and opportunities for improved sleep may improve their job attitudes. Results were not replicated when different analytical approaches were performed, so findings should be interpreted provisionally.