The effects of physical activity on sleep quality,job satisfaction,and quality of life in office workers

1 Introduction

The concept of healthy living is important, and physical activity and nutrition are key components [1]. A sedentary lifestyle is associated with chronic diseases, their associated risk factors, and musculoskeletal disorders [2].

Office workers are a large group that generally work in a seated position for many hours a day and therefore they have an increased risk for the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle [3]. These individuals remain in a sitting posture for approximately two-thirds of their working hours [4, 5]. In addition, long hours, time constraints, and a lack of social space all increase the risk of reduced physical activity [6, 7]. Sedentary behavior in office workplaces is a risk factor for the development of chronic diseases including cardio-metabolic diseases, diabetes, obesity, coronary artery disease, musculoskeletal disorders [8, 9], and some types of cancer [2, 10]. Study results have indicated that each two-hour increment in sitting increases the risk of obesity by 5%, the risk of diabetes by 7% [11], and raises the risk of musculoskeletal disorders, especially neck and low back pain [12, 13]. In contrast, an active lifestyle improves sleep quality [14] and general health, decreases the risk of chronic diseases [15], allows physical activity to continue during the aging process and increases quality of life [16, 17]. Therefore, regular physical activity might be recommended to prevent the adverse effects of sedentary working conditions for office workers. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of physical activity on sleep quality, job satisfaction, and quality of life for office workers by comparing data obtained from a sample of office workers drawn from administrative staff of a university who are physically active and those who are not. We hypothesized that office workers who are active regularly will have better sleep quality, job satisfaction, and quality of life.

2 Subjects and methods

This study included office workers who were 25–60 years old, had worked in a seated position at least eight hours a day for at least five years, and did not have any musculoskeletal system disorders diagnosed by a physician. The participants signed a consent form. Ethical approval of the study was obtained from the University Ethics Commission (Approval number = 431-2929).

The participants were divided into two groups; Group I, individuals who did regular physical activity for at least eight weeks, and Group II, individuals who did not do regular physical activity. The criterion for regular physical activity was an exercise program (jogging, running, fitness, yoga, etc.) at least one hour a day, a minimum of three days per week, based on literature [18, 19]. Information including age, gender, height, weight, and time worked were recorded.

Sleep quality was assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The PSQI has a Turkish language translation with adequate validity and reliability. This questionnaire assesses the quality of sleep, amount of sleep, and presence and severity of sleep disturbances during the past month [20, 21]. The minimum score is 0 (better), the maximum score is 21 (worse). A total score of 5 and below is associated with good sleep quality, and a score above 5 is associated with poor sleep quality.

Job satisfaction was determined by the Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale (MJSS), which was developed in 1967 and translated into Turkish in 1985 [22, 23]. It consists of 20 items, each scored on a 5-point Likert scale where 1 = ‘Very Dissatisfied’ and 5 = ‘Very Satisfied’. The overall satisfaction score is the sum of the scores obtained from the 20 items. The highest score on the scale is 100, the higher the score the higher the satisfaction level. The midpoint score of 60 means neutral satisfaction.

The World Health Organization Quality-of-Life-Scale (WHOQOL-BREF) was used to evaluate the quality of life of the participants. The WHOQOL-BREF is a health-related scale consisting of 27 questions, which measure physical, psychological, social and environmental well-being [24, 25]. Each subscale independently expresses the quality of life in its own field. The total score in each subscale is converted to a percentage score, the higher the score the higher the quality of life.

3 Results

A total of 109 office workers, 56.9% male, participated in the study. Group I included 59 individuals and group II included 50 individuals. Information describing the groups are presented in (Table 1). No significant differences were found between groups in terms of age, height, weight, and time worked (p > 0.05).

No significant difference was found between groups in terms of sleep quality (p = 0.52). The overall job satisfaction of Group I was significantly higher than group II (p = 0.03). All subscales of the WHOQOL-BREF were significantly higher for Group I than Group II (p < 0.05) (Table 2).

Physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality and is one of the principal causes of breast and colon cancer, diabetes, and ischemic heart disease. WHO suggests that adults aged 18–64 years do moderate to vigorous physical activity for 150 minutes per week to reduce the risk factors of several diseases [18]. In our study, we intended to put forth possible negative effects of physical inactivity on job satisfaction and sleep quality that might affect quality of life. Our findings indicated that there was no difference between groups in terms of sleep quality, however overall job satisfaction, quality of life for individuals who did regular physical activity was superior to individuals who did not do regular physical activity.

The strength of the current study is the comparison of a group doing regular physical activity with a group who did not do regular physical activity whose age, height, weight, and time worked are identical. We found no difference between groups in terms of sleep quality. However, we expected to find the sleep quality of individuals who did physical activity was better than those who did not. We thought increasing energy consumption with exercise and endorphin secretion may improve sleep quality. The reason here is no difference between groups may be the presence of other factors including daylight exposure, appetite, body mass index, etc. [26] that could affect sleep quality.

Office workers have become more sedentary due to long hours and increasing computer usage [27, 28]. This may affect job satisfaction and quality of life. Physical activity is associated with various aspects of well-being, and studies show the effect of workplace exercises on participants [28–30]. It was reported an exercise reminder software program helped decrease office workers’ perceived pain [28], and a physical exercise intervention positively affected physical well-being [29]. However, it may not always be possible to exercise at work, therefore we thought regular physical activity may also have positive effects on job satisfaction and quality of life. As we hypothesized, the office workers in this sample who did regular physical activities had better overall job satisfaction and quality of life. Several factors including physiological, psychological and environmental conditions affect job satisfaction [32–34]. Musculoskeletal symptoms have been found to be associated with low job satisfaction among office workers [33]. A good working environment is also essential to increase the level of job satisfaction [34]. According to our study results, a continuum of regular physical activity may also increase overall job satisfaction due to its possible positive effects on the factors including psychological, physiological and environmental conditions, which affect job satisfaction. Regular physical activity was also found to be beneficial on overall quality of life and general health as well as physical and psychological health, social relationships and environment. These results showed that besides the physical health benefits of regular physical activity, there were also psychosocial benefits in office workers. The present findings suggest that if office workers did not have the opportunity to do workplace exercises due to workload, lack of space, motivation etc., regular physical activity away from the workplace could be recommended.

In our study we divided participants into two groups according to whether they exercised regularly for eight weeks or not, but we did not investigate the effect of physical activity in terms of its type, duration, etc. Moreover, since the study sample consisted of office workers from administrative staff of a university, the results might not be generalizable to all office-based workers with different workplaces. These could be the limitations of this study; thereby current results could be expanded by analyzing the characteristics of regular physical activity with a larger sample working in different workplaces in future studies.

In conclusion, our results suggest that regular physical activity could be recommended to office workers to increase job satisfaction and quality of life.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Funding

This research was carried out without funding.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.