Effects of Job Stressors, Stress Response, and Sleep Disturbance on Presenteeism in Office Workers

Occupational mental health, work environment, sleep health, presenteeism, and loss of work productivity caused by health problems are all public health concerns. Although sleep affects mental health and presenteeism, the associations between sleep disturbance, job stressors, stress responses, and presenteeism have remained unclear. We hypothesized that job stressors affect the presenteeism of office workers through sleep disturbance and analyzed the association among these factors.

In 2017, a cross-sectional survey of adult office workers was performed. A total of 2899 subjects who provided written consent were included in the analysis. The survey collected demographic information, as well as the Work Limitation Questionnaire (WLQ), Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), and Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ). Associations between each of the variables were analyzed by path analysis (covariance structure analysis). This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tokyo Medical University.

The path analysis demonstrated that job stressors, psychological and physical stress response (PPSR) in the BJSQ, and sleep disturbance in the PSQI had direct effects on presenteeism in the WLQ. Both job stressors and social support in the BJSQ indirectly affected presenteeism through effects on sleep disturbance and PPSR. Sleep disturbance indirectly affected presenteeism via PPSR. This model accounted for the variation of presenteeism (R ² = 0.322).

In the workplace, job stressors and low social support increase presenteeism through psychological and physical stress responses, as well as sleep disturbance. Evaluating and resolving work problems and sleep disturbance would hence be beneficial from the aspects of public health and socioeconomics.