Be Prepared: How Psychological Reattachment Buffers the Effect of a Bad Night’s Sleep

Abstract

Psychological reattachment refers to the process of mentally tuning into one’s work before initiating work in the morning. In the current diary study, we investigated a) the relationship between good sleep at night and psychological reattachment to work in the morning and b) the effects of sleep at night and psychological reattachment on work engagement and proactivity during the day. Furthermore, we considered two competing ideas regarding how sleep at night and psychological reattachment might be related. The first idea assumes an energetic process in which psychological reattachment might benefit from a good night’s sleep by serving as a mediator in the relationship between sleep quality and work engagement and proactivity. The second idea assumes a cognitive, self-regulatory process in which psychological reattachment is independent of resource-replenishing sleep and instead serves as a moderator of the relationship between daily sleep quality and work engagement and proactivity. We conducted a daily diary study comprising two online surveys completed on 10 consecutive workdays. We collected data from 171 employees on 1,186 days. The results indicated that on days with both good sleep quality and high psychological reattachment, work engagement and proactivity were both higher. Daily psychological reattachment did not mediate the relationship between daily sleep quality and work engagement but buffered the negative effects of a poor night’s sleep, supporting the second of our competing ideas. Thus, organizations should encourage and train their employees to psychologically reattach to their work in the morning.