Sleep Patterns and Sleep Alignment in Remote Teams during COVID-19

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Working remotely from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant shifts and disruptions in the personal and work lives of millions of information workers and their teams. We examined how sleep patterns---an important component of mental and physical health---relates to teamwork. We used wearable sensing and daily questionnaires to examine sleep patterns, affect, and perceptions of teamwork in 71 information workers from 22 teams over a ten-week period. Participants reported delays in sleep onset and offset as well as longer sleep duration during the pandemic. A similar shift was found in work schedules, though total work hours did not change significantly. Surprisingly, we found that more sleep was negatively related to positive affect and perceptions of teamwork and team productivity. However, a greater misalignment in the sleep patterns of members in a team predicted positive affect and teamwork after accounting for individual differences in sleep preferences. A qualitative analysis of interviews suggests that a greater misalignment in sleep may lead team members to have more or better teamwork. We discuss implications of sleep and sleep misalignment in work-from-home contexts with an eye for applying insights towards how sleep data may be leveraged to facilitate remote teamwork.