In recent years, employers have begun to allow workers greater scheduling flexibility. Generally, the idea behind flexible schedules has been to help employees meet their family commitments, notably child care, as well as to reduce the amount of time they spend commuting during rush hour.

New research offers another powerful argument in favor of flexible schedules: allowing employees to get more sleep.

Sleep deprivation, research shows, is not just a problem for people who aren't giving themselves enough time in bed. Many people have a hard time getting quality shut-eye at certain times of the day. Their internal clock may be set to sleep between midnight and 8 o'clock in the morning, for instance, making it hard for them to get a good night's sleep if they have to be at work at 8.

An increasing number of employers are offering workers schedules that align with their sleep schedules, in the hopes that employees will be better-rested, happier and more productive. Among employers that have recently implemented such changes: Southwest Airlines and the U.S. Navy.

“I think circadian rhythms will be a huge issue for human resources in the future,” Camilla Kring, a Danish consultant who has been hired by a number of major companies to help employees figure out schedules that align with their sleep patterns, tells the New York Times. “It really makes sense to think about when people have the most energy and when they're peaking mentally.”

Just small scheduling adjustments can go a long way toward boosting the sleep that a workforce gets each week. In 2015, a study conducted on workers at a German steel factory found that assigning employees to the night or morning shift based on their sleep patterns resulted in workers getting 16 percent more sleep, or equal to nearly a full extra night of sleep each week.

Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, who conducted the study, also collected and analyzed sleep data from 300,000 people and found that the most common “chronotype,” or sleep schedule, is between midnight and 8 a.m. But even that chronotype only accounts for 13 percent of the population. Meanwhile, 56 percent prefer going to bed and rising later and 31 percent are better-suited for earlier bedtimes.

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Best benefit of flex scheduling? Rested employees.

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