Better alignment between circadian preference and sleep and work timings during COVID-19 did not benefit work engagement at home

ABSTRACT

Modern society is structured around early routines which cause evening types to suffer from health and performance detriments associated with sleep times being misaligned with biological needs (circadian preference). Given that COVID-19 lockdowns were less constrained by social schedules, the current study explores whether temporal behaviours became better aligned with biological needs, and whether these changes benefited work engagement. 406 UK participants reported circadian preference and pre-lockdown and lockdown sleep times, work times, and work engagement. Results found that sleep health improved under lockdown measures in terms of increased sleep duration and reduced social jetlag, and sleep and work times became better aligned with circadian preferences. The most circadian-misaligned participants – students and young adults – exhibited the largest changes to sleep and work habits. However, work engagement decreased more in participants with improved social jetlag and delayed work habits, which is surprising given that these temporal changes reflect improved circadian alignment. We discuss potential moderators including poor sleep quality, non-engaging work-from-home environments, and mental health. These findings have implications for encouraging flexible educational and employment schedules post-COVID-19 to satisfy the common drive to improve circadian alignment, but future work must determine the moderating factors that impair work engagement during remote work.

KEYWORDS:

• Sleep
• circadian alignment
• chronotype
• entrainment
• work engagement
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

Rebecca Crowley was supported by a PhD studentship from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data and analysis scripts underlying this article are available on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/jnfrv/.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2023.2258954.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.