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Psychological Detachment From Work During Leisure Time: The Benefits of Mentally Disengaging From Work
Abstract
Psychological detachment from work during leisure time refers to a state in which people mentally disconnect from work and do not think about job-related issues when they are away from their job. Empirical research has shown that employees who experience more detachment from work during off-hours are more satisfied with their lives and experience fewer symptoms of psychological strain, without being less engaged while at work. Studies have demonstrated that fluctuations in individuals’ psychological detachment from work can explain fluctuations in their affective states, and have identified positive relations between detachment from work during off-hours and job performance. Trait negative affectivity, high involvement in one’s job, job stressors, and poor environmental conditions are negatively related to psychological detachment from work during off-job time.
... Our research makes both theoretical and methodological contributions to the stress and recovery literature. By comparing different perspectives on how job stressors affect employees' well-being within and across days, we respond to the call to pay more attention to temporal issues in order to extend our knowledge of the temporal dynamic of the stressor-strain relation (Sonnentag, 2012;Sonnentag et al., 2017). Previous stress research using diary study designs has mainly focused on immediate effects or effects within one day, offering valuable insights into the linkages between daily work experiences and well-being fluctuations (Ilies, Aw, et al., 2015). ...
Studies investigating the stressor–strain relation using daily diary designs have been interested in within-person deviations that predict well-being outcomes on the same day. These models typically have not accounted for the possibility of short-term accumulation (i.e. previous stressor experiences having a lasting effect and affecting strain on subsequent occasions) and sensitisation (i.e. previous stressor experiences amplifying subsequent reactions to stressors) effects of stressors such as workload across days. In this study, we test immediate, accumulation, and sensitisation effects of workload on fatigue within and across days using four diary studies (mean observations = 1,406; mean N = 166). In all four studies, we observed that workload had positive concurrent effects on fatigue. In addition, we found that workload had positive effects on fatigue within one day. However, there was insufficient support for short-term accumulation or sensitisation effects, implying that higher levels of workload on previous days did not directly affect or amplify the effect of workload on fatigue on that day. We discuss implications for recovery theories and potential future avenues to refine the theoretical propositions that describe intra-individual stress and recovery processes across days.
... This gave them justification for accepting an "unanticipated state" of relationship and marital status (Eck, 2013, p. 58). Such processes resemble those that appear among workers who engage with and disengage from their work (Sonnentag, 2012). ...
... Being proactive is taking an effort to manage a situation or predicting potential difficulties (Sonnentag, 2012). It is taking the initiative and making attempts to control a situation or predict future problems before they occur. ...
The chance of survival of businesses in Rwanda is underprivileged and 82% of them close at an early stage, which negatively affects manufacturing companies, particularly Family-Owned Manufacturing Companies (FOMCs). Although there are other reasons why many FOMCs do not succeed in the next generation, a lack of pro-activeness has surfaced as a critical factor. Thus, the study aimed to assess the effect of pro-activeness on the survival of family-owned manufacturing companies in Kigali City, Rwanda. The study was conducted in Kigali City, from 2017 to 2023; Cochran’s formula was employed to determine a sample size of 384 senior employees picked at random from 77 FOMCs. This study employed Self-administered questionnaires and a quantitative approach. Multiple linear regression analysis was utilized to find out the relationship among variables. IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) SPSS (Software Package for Social Sciences) was employed to analyze data. The findings of this study indicated that pro-activeness had a substantial influence on the survival of family-owned manufacturing companies. The study offers a cogent explanation of the relationship between the longevity of family-owned manufacturing companies and pro-activeness. The study also offers important insights into the smooth and effective execution of pro-activeness for the survival and continuity of family-owned manufacturing enterprises. Moreover, the study findings indicated that combining pro-activeness and training the successors boost the productivity of family-owned companies and make them more competitive in the market, which leads to the long-term survival of FOMFs. The FOMFs that use pro-activeness in their operations survive longer than the ones without it.
... Psychological detachment, mental disengagement from work (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007), is a crucial recovery experience (Sonnentag, 2012). It is positively related to self-reported physical and mental health, state well-being, and job performance (for metaanalysis, see Wendsche & Lohmann-Haislah, 2017). ...
Although previous research suggests that off-job activities are generally important for recovery from work stress, a profound understanding of which aspects of recovery activities benefit the recovery process and why is still lacking. In the present work, we introduce a dimensional approach toward studying recovery activities and present a taxonomy of key recovery activity dimensions (physical, mental, social, spiritual, creative, virtual, and outdoor). Across four studies (total N = 908) using cross-sectional, time-lagged, and a diary design, we develop and validate the Recovery Activity Characteristics (RAC) questionnaire, a multidimensional measure of RAC. Results demonstrate its content validity, high scale reliabilities, and a strong factor structure. With a 10-day diary study involving two daily measurement occasions, we demonstrate the role of RAC for recovery experiences and downstream well-being outcomes. Findings underscore the importance of carefully differentiating the active ingredients of recovery activities as they differentially relate to same evening and next-morning exhaustion and vigor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Existing studies on boundary management are mainly discussing the work and family conflicts. However, online social networks (OSNs), such as Facebook, Twitter, and WeChat, are widespread in both personal and business settings, which has profoundly shifted employees’ professional/personal boundary management practices. OSNs offer the advantages of efficient communication, social capital, and newcomer socialization, but can also blur the boundaries between professional and personal issues, which may cause concerns such as privacy anxiety, professional evaluation distortion, and even career path obstacle. This chapter first introduces the conceptualizations of boundary management and blurring boundary, discussing current topics and issues with great concerns by practitioners and researchers such as roles transition between work and personal lives, and the self-presentation motivation. Then, I review the key antecedents and outcomes of boundary management, which followed by the distinctions between two forms of blurring boundaries. On the topic of “Concerns and Challenges about Blurring Boundary in the Workplace”, I discuss the difficulties in dealing with blurring boundaries, and provide tactics suggestions in the following section. This chapter ends by providing an overview of the boundary management measurement, significance, and future research directions.KeywordsBoundary managementRole theorySelf-presentation theoryOnline social networks
Purpose
Preventing diseases and promoting health is most effective in large settings like the workplace. Digital workplace health promotion (DWHP) became more popular during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. While e-health appliances have received research interest, little is known regarding the target populations' perspective on and potentials of the DWPH.
Design/methodology/approach
An online pilot study was done in Germany in June 2021. The study is representative regarding age, gender and education. The user perspective on DWHP was investigated using 12 quantitative and 2 qualitative items.
Findings
The majority of the 690 participants perceives DWHP as valid long-term addition to regular workplace health promotion. Nearly 55.7% use DWHP when available, but most (65.4%) do not use these offers more than regular ones. Spontaneous participation is relevant for about 55%. Problems occur due to technical equipment (29.4%) and premises (36.3%). Open remarks highlight specifics to be observed in offer design, for example, data security issues.
Research limitations/implications
To conclude, DWHP has a high potential to improve health at the workplace initiatives regarding participation rates, outcomes and costs. Challenges can be overcome by ensuring data protection and skills, which can be transferred to other life domains, improving population health. The potentials of DWHP for population health via spillover effects, employee well-being and employer branding have not yet been reached.
Originality/value
The aim of this study is giving a first overview of employee views on and use of DWHP.
Maladaptive consumer behaviors like compulsive buying, herding behavior, and hoarding pose risks to consumers' well-being. However, less is known about how distinct consumer conflicts differentially predispose individuals to specific behaviors through psychological factors. This study aimed to test a socio-environmental model whereby financial stress, work-life imbalance, information overload, and social comparisons predict compulsive buying, herding, and hoarding through mental health difficulties and personality factors. An online sample of 384 Iranian adult consumers completed measures of consumer conflicts, psychosocial variables, and behavioral disorders. Results indicated that a wide range of conflict types is most strongly associated with particular disorders of consumer behavior. Mental health difficulties mediated some relationships while also conferring transdiagnostic vulnerability. Findings highlight the need for tailored interventions addressing the most relevant conflict sources for each behavioral disorder. Limitations include cross-sectional correlations and self-report methodology. Experimental, longitudinal, and clinical research manipulating conflict sources and measuring behaviors objectively can clarify causal processes and inform interventions to reduce maladaptive consumer behaviors.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a literature review on daily recovery during non-work time. Specifically, next to discussing theories that help us understand the process of recovery, we will clarify how recovery and its potential outcomes have been conceptualized so far. Consequently, we present empirical findings of diary studies addressing the activities that may facilitate or hinder daily recovery. We will pay special attention to potential mechanisms that may underlie the facilitating or hindering processes. Owing to the limited research on daily recovery, we will review empirical findings on predictors and outcomes of a related construct, namely need for recovery. We conclude with an overall framework from which daily recovery during non-work time can be understood. In this framework, we claim that daily recovery is an important moderator in the process through which job characteristics and their related strain may lead to unfavorable states on a daily basis.
A rigorous quasi-experiment tested the ameliorative effects of a sabbatical leave, a special case of respite from routine work. We hypothesized that (a) respite increases resource level and well-being and (b) individual differences and respite features moderate respite effects. A sample of 129 faculty members on sabbatical and 129 matched controls completed measures of resource gain, resource loss, and well-being before, during, and after the sabbatical. Among the sabbatees, resource loss declined and resource gain and well-being rose during the sabbatical. The comparison group showed no change. Moderation analysis revealed that those who reported higher respite self-efficacy and greater control, were more detached, had a more positive sabbatical experience, and spent their sabbatical outside their home country enjoyed more enhanced well-being than others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Bullying at work has been receiving an increasing amount of research attention as an important social stressor in work contexts. Extant research has concentrated overwhelmingly on work related predictors of bullying. However, there is a lack of studies focusing on individual moderators of the experience of bullying. The aim of the present study was to examine the moderating role of psychological detachment and thoughts of revenge in the workplace bullying process. To minimize the effect of common method variance, we tested our hypothesis using a research design in which we collected data at two points in time separated by 1 month. A total of 523 individuals responded to both phases, with 511 useable surveys. Results revealed that psychological detachment moderates the relationship between (1) role conflict and workplace bullying and between (b) bullying and psychological strain. Similarly, thoughts of revenge moderate the relationship between role conflict and bullying. The findings are discussed in light of the cognitive activation theory of stress.
The aim of the present study was to extend the original Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model by taking into account recovery as an important mediation mechanism between work characteristics and well-being/ill-health. Specifically, we examined whether recovery experiences—strategies promoting recovery—might have a mediating role in the JD-R model among 527 employees from a variety of different jobs. The results showed that psychological detachment fully mediated the effects of job demands on fatigue at work and mastery partially mediated the effects of job resources on work engagement. Altogether, the results suggest that recovery merits consideration as a mediating mechanism in the JD-R model.
Recovery from work stress is crucial in avoiding stress-related ill-health. The aim of this longitudinal study was to investigate whether processes that prolong the mental exposure to work stressors, such as inability to withdraw from work (IW), the core construct in overcommitment, predicts fatigue and poor next-day recovery 6 months later over what is predicted by job control and job demands. Self-ratings in questionnaires were completed by 160 women working in dental care at two time points, 6 months apart. Job demands, job control, and IW were used to predict fatigue and poor next-day recovery, respectively. Multiple regression analyses show that having children living at home, high job demands, and high IW were associated with fatigue 6 months later. Job demands and IW, but not having children at home, predicted poor next-day recovery. Mediation analyses using a bootstrapping procedure indicated that IW partly mediated the relationship between job demands and fatigue and between job demands and next-day recovery. These findings highlight the importance of considering IW in relation to fatigue and recovery from work and that such factors should be included in interventions targeting work-related stress.
We examine how start-of-workday mood serves as an "affective prime" that relates to how employees see work events, how they feel subsequent to events, and how this felt affect relates to objective performance. Using experience sampling and both archival and coded performance, we tested these relationships in a call center. We found that start-of-workday mood relates to employee perceptions of customer affective display and employee affect subsequent to events (i.e., calls). Positive affect subsequent to events relates to coded performance quality, whereas negative affect subsequent to events relates to productivity. We find evidence that affect subsequent to events is a mediator.
This study examined the direct and moderator roles of recovery experiences (psychological detachment from work, relaxation, mastery, and control) in the relationship between psychosocial work characteristics (i.e. time demands, job control, and justice of the supervisor) and occupational well-being (need for recovery, job exhaustion, and work engagement). The study was conducted among 527 Finnish employees from several occupational sectors who were employed in a variety of different jobs. Of the employees, 53% were women and the average age was 42.4 years. The moderated hierarchical regression analyses showed that psychological detachment and mastery were protective mechanisms against increased need for recovery in a situation of lack of job control. Also, relaxation protected against increased job exhaustion under high time demands. In addition, recovery experiences - psychological detachment and mastery in particular - had direct links to occupational well-being. Altogether, the study findings suggest that recovery experiences play a significant role in maintaining well-being at work.
In this 2-week diary study, with 105 employees providing data on a total of 476 days, we examined relationships between the amount of time spent on volunteer work activities during leisure time, psychological non-work experiences in the evening (i.e. recovery experiences of psychological detachment from work and mastery as well as need satisfaction), and work outcomes during the following working day (i.e. positive and negative affect, and active listening). Results confirmed the hypothesized positive relationships between the amount of time spent on volunteer work activities and psychological detachment from work, mastery experiences, and need satisfaction in the evening. Psychological detachment from work in the evening was positively related to active listening during the following working day. Need satisfaction in the evening was negatively related to negative affect and positively related to active listening during the following working day. The amount of time spent on volunteer work activities was negatively related to negative affect during the following working day. This relationship was mediated by need satisfaction in the evening.
This paper examines psychological detachment (i.e., mentally “switching off”) from work during non-work time as a partial mediator between job stressors and low work-home boundaries on the one hand and strain reactions (emotional exhaustion, need for recovery) on the other hand. Survey data were collected from a sample of protestant pastors (N = 136) and their spouses (N = 97). Analyses showed that high workload, emotional dissonance, and low spatial work-home boundaries were related to poor psychological detachment from work during non-work time. Poor psychological detachment in turn predicted high levels of emotional exhaustion and need for recovery. Psychological detachment was a partial mediator between job stressors and strain reactions. This study avoids same-source bias and demonstrates the importance of psychological detachment in the stressor–strain relationship.
Directed attention plays an important role in human information processing; its fatigue, in turn, has far-reaching consequences. Attention Restoration Theory provides an analysis of the kinds of experiences that lead to recovery from such fatigue. Natural environments turn out to be particularly rich in the characteristics necessary for restorative experiences. An integrative framework is proposed that places both directed attention and stress in the larger context of human-environment relationships.