A cross sectional study on sleep quality of a call center employees working night shifts in India.

Background: There have been substantial increases in newer business models like business process outsourcing (BPOs) in last two decades in India. Various factors have contributed to the conducive environment in India for these businesses to boom which include, cheaper labor costs and the pool of skilled, English speaking Indians have been the foremost factors. The employees working at night may be unable to sleep adequately during daytime, which can compromise their health status. Few studies indicate that the night shift duties result in serious health concerns for call center employees, it was observed that sleep disorders were present among 83% of employees. Objectives: To assess the sleep quality using Athens insomnia scale. Methods: The present study is a cross sectional study. Results: The mean age of employees in the study was 25.35 years. Majority of the employees were males 78.4% were males; most of them were unmarried 87.5%, 11.5% married, and rest of the 1 % were divorced. Most of the employees were graduates i.e. 84.2% and 7% were post-graduates; rest of the employees had diplomas. In the present study, majority of the employees worked in night shift or changing shift 83% the remaining 17 % worked in day shift. 82 % of the participants worked for 7–9 hours per day, rest of the 18.0% worked for 9–14 hours per day. About 48% of the employees were cigarette smokers. 91.4% of these were males and 8.6% were females. Most of the 56% of the employees who smoked cited the reason for smoking as stress and 11% smoked to stay up at night. About 47% of the employees consumed alcohol. Only about 21.6% call employees did not have any type of sleep problems; 63.5% had suspected insomnia and 14.9% had insomnia according to the Athens insomnia scale. Conclusion The call center employees need to be screened for Regular health check-ups, the employees need to have access to consultation of counsellors and need to educated about the sleep hygiene and healthy lifestyle. Large scale multicentric studies should be conducted to better understand the epidemiology of the problem