Mind the misalignment: The moderating role of daily social sleep lag in employees' recovery processes

Abstract

SummaryCircadian processes are important for employees and organizations yet have been relatively underexplored in recovery research. Thus, we embed the concept of circadian misalignment into the recovery literature by investigating the moderating role of employees' daily social sleep lag (i.e., a discrepancy between employees' actual and biologically preferred sleep–wake times) in their recovery processes. Building on the effort‐recovery model and a circadian perspective on recovery, we propose that low relaxation and mastery experiences explain the relationship between workplace interpersonal conflicts and low next‐morning vigor. Concerning circadian misalignment, we investigated whether daily social sleep lag impedes the occurrence and effectiveness of after‐work recovery experiences (i.e., moderates the relationships with interpersonal conflicts and vigor, respectively). Results of a daily diary study with 274 employees (1926 days) demonstrated that low mastery experiences, but not relaxation, explained the negative association between interpersonal conflicts and next‐morning vigor. Additionally, mastery experiences translated less to next‐morning vigor on days with high (vs. low) social sleep lag. Investigating circadian misalignment can thus help determine under which circumstances employees best recover from work, highlighting the need to take circadian processes into account in recovery research.

It is Monday again: Weekend sleep differentially relates to the workweek via reattachment on Monday

“…Concerning weekend social sleep lag, we found none of the assumed relationships with Monday reattachment and workweek outcomes. We can only speculate that circadian misalignment arising from social sleep lag is more relevant as a person-level (Kühnel et al, 2016) or day-level (Völker et al, 2024) boundary condition for employees' well-being and behavior at work and does not critically impact the transition from one week to another. Importantly, however, higher weekend catch-up sleep was related to higher levels of workweek exhaustion via lower levels of Monday reattachment, and higher weekend sleep quality was indirectly related to lower levels of exhaustion throughout the workweek via higher levels of Monday reattachment.…”

“…An inconsistency in sleep duration and timing might decrease employees' cognitive functioning (e.g., Chaput et al, 2020;Smevik et al, 2023) and thus, also relate to their workweek. Using a weekly diary design and focusing on differences between employees' workweek and weekend sleep enables us to investigate sleep characteristics that usually cannot be assessed in daily diary designs (i.e., weekend catchup sleep) or have so far mostly been operationalized as stable between-person differences (i.e., social sleep lag, Kühnel et al, 2016;Völker et al, 2024). Accordingly, we paint a more nuanced picture of the role that sleep plays in organizational behavior by focusing on weekend sleep quality as well as weekly sleep inconsistency.…”