Methodological issues in recovery research

Validation of the Indonesian version of the Recovery Experience Questionnaire

This study aimed to validate the Indonesian version of the Recovery Experience Questionnaire (REQ-I) to assess how individuals unwind and recuperate from work during their off-job times, specifically in terms of psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control. The translated and back-translated REQ, which has gone through semantic and face validation processes, was administered through an internet survey using 740 Indonesian workers from various backgrounds. Furthermore, confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to evaluate factorial validity. Construct validity was evaluated based on the correlation coefficients between recovery experience and potential consequences variables, while internal consistency and test-retest reliability were investigated to evaluate the reliability. The result of CFA showed that the hypothesized four-factor model was the most suitable for the data. Meanwhile, construct validity was supported by expected correlations of recovery experiences with possible consequences. Cronbach's α coefficient for each of the four subscales was sufficient at 0.85-0.92. Test-retest reliability of each of the four subscales with three months intervals was confirmed with sufficient intraclass correlation coefficients at 0.60-0.66. This current study confirmed that REQ-I was an adequate measure of recovery experiences used in the Indonesian context.

Stop (to Work) and Go (to Recover) During Mandatory Work From Home: A Three-Wave Study

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers have been forced to work from home. In this situation, the boundaries between work and private life have become particularly blurred, and recovering from work was even more difficult than in traditional times, with negative consequences for workers' health. Among the psychological experiences that might underlie the recovery process, mastery played a crucial role as people sought new stimuli and challenging situations. However, there are few articles that have explored the role of this specific recovery experience, its antecedents, and the health consequences under conditions of work from home. Therefore, in this multiwave study, we aimed to investigate the role of mastery as a mediator between supervisor support and insomnia problems. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and had a three-wave design. A convenience sample of 130 employees (67% women) completed an online questionnaire. Hypotheses were tested using a three-wave autoregressive cross-lagged panel model. According to the results, supervisor support at Time 1 was positively related to mastery at Time 2, which in turn showed a negative association with insomnia at Time 3. The results demonstrated that mastery experiences have played a crucial role during COVID-19 mandatory work from home, which points to some potential implications for workers' health in the adoption of teleworking beyond the emergency situation.

Conceptualizing Sexual Pleasure at Home as a Work-Related Stress Recovery Activity

Job stress is pervasive in today's workforce and has negative implications for employees' mental and physical well-being and job performance. Recovery activities outside of work can reduce strain and improve work outcomes; however, little is known about pleasurable intimate recovery experiences and their influence on work outcomes, even though these experiences are important parts of most people's lives outside of work. The present study examined sexual activity that is shared either with a relationship partner or oneself (masturbation) and how pleasure specifically predicts well-being and work outcomes to induce recovery. Results suggest that pleasurable sexual activity, with a partner or alone, is related to perceived recovery from work stress, job satisfaction, work engagement, and life satisfaction. Moreover, perceived recovery from work mediated the relationship between pleasurable sex and work outcomes. Gender moderated this relationship such that pleasurable sex was a stronger predictor of recovery for women (compared to men) in the context of sex within committed relationship partners (but not masturbation). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Live-streaming Activity and Relaxation Breaks: a (Home-)Office-Compatible Approach to Promote Break Recovery, Mood, and Attention?

The aim of this study is to investigate whether short, live-streaming activity and relaxation lunch breaks have positive associations with office workers' mood (calmness, valence, and energetic arousal), back pain, and attention after break and whether these associations are mediated by better break recovery. Additionally, we considered the two respite interventions as resources possibly buffering the effects of elevated situational job demands. Ten-minute break exercises were conducted during lunch breaks via Zoom live-stream, and data on those days were compared with data on days on which participants spent their breaks as usual. Our sample of 34 office workers provided data for 277 work days (209 in the home office and 68 on site at the company). Multilevel path models revealed positive total associations of both respite interventions with the mood dimension of calmness. Activity breaks additionally showed a positive association with the energetic arousal dimension of mood, while relaxation breaks were positively related to objectively measured cognitive performance. Interestingly, activity breaks moderated the relationships of job demands with calmness and valence, indicating their function as a stress-buffering resource. There were no significant associations between the two respite interventions and back pain. Supplemented by participants' feedback, the findings of this study suggest that offering short virtually guided break exercises may represent a feasible and office-compatible approach to promote break recovery, mood and functionality at work, especially regarding home-office work. Possible advantages and disadvantages of the live-streaming format are discussed.

Boundary management and recovery when working from home: The moderating roles of segmentation preference and availability demands

Blurred work–home boundaries can hamper teleworkers’ recovery from job demands. In this study, we investigate teleworkers’ temporal, physical, communicative, and technological boundary tactics as predictors of recovery experiences (i.e. psychological detachment and control during leisure time) and recovery outcomes (i.e. exhaustion). We hypothesized that individuals’ work–home segmentation preference as a personal factor and availability demands as a situational factor should moderate the relations between boundary tactics and recovery. Using a web-based survey, we collected data from 274 individuals who mainly worked from home in a lockdown period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the use of temporal boundary tactics was positively associated with psychological detachment, control, and lower exhaustion. The use of technological boundary tactics was related to higher psychological detachment. Our moderator hypotheses were partly confirmed: Segmentation preference and availability demands strengthened the relationships between several boundary tactics and psychological detachment, control, and exhaustion. In sum, our study contributes to a better understanding of teleworkers’ recovery processes and provides actionable knowledge for teleworkers on how to enable and sustain their recovery.

Boundaryless working hours and recovery in Germany

OBJECTIVE

Due to recent trends such as globalization and digitalization, more and more employees tend to have flexible working time arrangements, including boundaryless working hours. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships of various aspects of boundaryless working hours (overtime, Sunday work, and extended work availability) with employees' state of recovery. Besides, we examined the mediating and moderating role of recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control) in these relationships.

METHODS

We used data from 8586 employees (48% women; average age of 48 years) who took part in the 2017 BAuA-Working Time Survey, a representative study of the German working population. Regression analyses were conducted to test main effects as well as mediation and moderation.

RESULTS

Overtime work, Sunday work, and extended work availability were negatively related to state of recovery. Psychological detachment mediated these relationships. Furthermore, we found that relaxation and control mediated the association between extended work availability and state of recovery. However, no relevant moderating effects were found.

CONCLUSIONS

Altogether, our findings indicate that various aspects of boundaryless working hours pose a risk to employees' state of recovery and that especially psychological detachment is a potential mechanism in these relationships. In addition, the results suggest that a high level of recovery experiences cannot attenuate these negative relationships in leisure time. Therefore, employers and employees alike should try to avoid or minimize boundaryless working hours.

Well Recovered and More Creative? A Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Between Vacation and Creativity

The aim of this study was to investigate employees’ self-reported creativity before and after vacation and to examine the impact of recovery experiences (detachment, relaxation, mastery, meaning, autonomy, affiliation) on changes in creativity. The DRAMMA model of Newman et al. provides the theoretical background of our approach. Longitudinal data was assessed with four repeated measurements. The study encompassed data from 274 white-collar workers. Analyses showed that employees subjectively perceive their creativity to benefit not immediately after their vacation but 2 weeks later. Detachment was significantly related to lower creativity within persons, while mastery experiences explained differences in creativity between persons. This study provides a detailed picture of changes in creativity around vacations.

Psychosocial safety climate improves psychological detachment and relaxation during off-job recovery time to reduce emotional exhaustion: A multilevel shortitudinal study

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a facet-specific climate for psychological health and safety which constitutes an important organizational resource for creating a conducive work environment. The process to regain/restore energy expended at work, known as "recovery," also plays a pivotal role for individuals; however, this process, together with PSC, remains largely underexplored. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of PSC in enhancing the moderating role of individuals' psychological detachment and relaxation during weekends on the relationship between daily job demands in Week 1 and daily emotional exhaustion in Week 2. Data from a shortitudinal study of 178 teachers (in total, 534 diaries) in Terengganu, Malaysia, over two consecutive weeks, were operationalized at the individual level and daily level using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) software. The analysis showed that the daily experience of job demands in the prior week led to an increment of emotional exhaustion in the following week. Interestingly, the interaction role of PSC*psychological detachment and PSC*relaxation moderated the relationship between daily job demands and daily emotional exhaustion. Overall, this study highlights the importance of individual off-job recovery time and that building good PSC at work is fundamental in compensating for the adverse relationships between job demands and its consequences.

Basic Psychological Needs in the Work Context: A Systematic Literature Review of Diary Studies

According to the self-determination theory, individuals' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness should be satisfied for optimal psychological growth. The satisfaction of these needs seems to vary due to changes in a person's social context, and the outcomes of the satisfaction of these needs also vary along with the needs. Despite several studies investigating daily and weekly variations in need satisfaction and its correlates, no systematic investigation exists. This study aimed to conduct a narrative synthesis of existing quantitative diary studies of basic psychological needs in the work context. We specifically aimed to evaluate if psychological need satisfaction varies daily and weekly and judge whether they vary more daily or weekly. Additionally, we also aimed to review the literature regarding the relations between daily or weekly variations in need satisfaction and its assumed antecedents and outcomes. We included peer-reviewed articles in English that measured work-related basic psychological needs using a quantitative diary study design. Database searching (Web of Science, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and Scopus) led to the extraction of 2 251 records by February 2020. Duplicates were removed, the remaining records were screened (n = 820), and 30 articles were assessed using eligibility criteria. Two authors individually conducted the screening and eligibility processes to manage selection bias. In total, 21 articles were included in the final review. The review indicated that basic psychological need satisfaction showed considerable within-person variation and was more dynamic daily (compared to weekly). Job demands, job resources, organisational resources, and individual characteristics appeared to associate with these variations. The organisational context seemed to matter the most for need satisfaction. Variations in need satisfaction were also related to employee well-being, performance, and motivation. Despite the small number of published studies (particularly for weekly studies), our results indicate that researchers should pay attention to within-person variations in need satisfaction. Measuring daily need satisfaction could be prioritised. Different antecedents and outcomes seem to be associated with different needs. Thus, when needs are viewed as distinct constructs instead of unidimensional ones, one can derive greater insights. The study is funded by the National Research Foundation.

Promoting recovery in daily life: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Work-related stress shows steadily increasing prevalence rates and has tangible consequences for individual workers, their organizations, and society as a whole. One mechanism that may help offset the negative outcomes of work-related stress on employees' well-being is recovery. Recovery refers to the experience of unwinding from one's job when not at work. However, employees who experience high levels of work-related stress and are thus particularly in need of recovery tend to struggle to switch-off. Due to the detrimental effects of this prolonged and sustained mental representation of job stressors, interventions promoting recovery may contribute to improvements in employees' mental health.

METHODS

In this randomized, waitlist controlled trial, we will investigate the effectiveness of two 6-week online training programs (cognitive behavioral and mindfulness-based). The sample will include employees working at least part-time during regular work hours. Besides the pre-post-follow-up assessments, the trial will include measurement bursts with the goal of examining the underlying mechanisms. We expect that both interventions will reduce work-related perseverative thinking (PT) compared with the waitlist control groups (primary outcome). Also, we expect that both interventions will result in similar improvements, but the underlying mechanisms will differ (process outcomes). In the cognitive-behavioral intervention group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in recovery experiences across time. In the mindfulness-based group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in facets of mindfulness across time.

DISCUSSION

In the present study, we will investigate mechanisms underlying assumed changes in work-related PT in great detail. Besides evaluating the overall effectiveness of the two interventions in terms of pre-post-follow-up changes, we will look at the underlying processes at different levels-that is, within days, within weeks, across weeks, and between individuals. Accordingly, our study will offer a fine-grained approach to investigating potential determinants, mediators, and moderators of the processes that may, in the end, be responsible for work-related strain. From a public health perspective, if effective, the online training programs may offer valuable, low-threshold, and low-intensity interventions for a broad range of occupations. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Registration: DRKS00024933. Registered prospectively 7 April 2021. https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00024933.

Bullying, supervisor support, relaxation, and personal and work outcomes: Testing a moderated mediation model

AIM

To test a mediated moderation model in which bullying and supervisor support interact to predict nurses' personal and work outcomes with relaxation during off-job time mediating these effects.

BACKGROUND

Bullying is a pervasive problem in the nursing profession. We integrate and extend past research addressing the question of how bullying and perceived supervisor support affect nurses' functioning.

METHOD

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of 290 nurses who completed measures of bullying, perceived supervisor support, relaxation, need for recovery, sleeping problems, job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion and work performance.

RESULTS

Results revealed that bullying was significantly linked to job satisfaction, sleeping problems, need for recovery and emotional exhaustion through relaxation, but only among nurses who perceived high levels of supervisor support.

CONCLUSION

These results revealed that high supervisor support may be detrimental for nurses adding up to a negative cycle of stressors to maladaptive outcomes through lack of relaxation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Health care organisations and managers should consider addressing work environment factors, such as bullying, in addition to supervisor support in their efforts to facilitate the positive effects of nurses' relaxation during non-work time.

What makes a good work break? Off-job and on-job recovery as predictors of employee health

Recovery from work today seems to be crucial for health care employees' health, so it is important to uncover ways how to facilitate and improve adequate recovery from work. Focusing on the recovery concept of detachment from work, this study investigated associations between detachment after work and during work breaks and individual health among health care employees from a general hospital in the Netherlands. An online cross-sectional survey study was conducted comprising a sample of 368 health care employees of different departments. Controlling for demographics in hierarchical regression analyses, results showed that when health care employees experienced more cognitive detachment after work, they reported less concentration problems. Second, when employees experienced more emotional detachment after work, they reported less feelings of emotional exhaustion, less depressive feelings, and less sleep problems. Finally, in case employees experienced more physical detachment after work, they reported less concentration problems, less feelings of emotional exhaustion, less sleep problems and less physical health problems. No significant associations were found for detachment during work breaks. In conclusion, findings add to current recovery research showing that detachment after work is an important predictor for health care employees' health.

How to benefit from weekend physical activities: Moderating roles of psychological recovery experiences and sleep

This study examines the short-term recovery benefits of weekend physical activity on reduced negative affective state (NA) on Monday morning, using a weekly diary method from 70 employees across four weekends (repeated pre- and post-weekend measures). The first hypothesis tests the within-person relationship between weekend physical activity and post-weekend NA. The results of multilevel path analysis show that the main effect of weekend physical activity on reduced Monday NA is not significant. In addition, the study tests weekend recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control) and sleep hours as possible moderators. The findings support the moderating effects of psychological detachment and sleep hours. Specifically, weekend physical activity is related to lower Monday NA only if workers achieve high psychological detachment from work during the weekend. If not, their weekend physical activity is associated with higher NA. Also, the benefit of weekend physical activity occurs only when workers sleep longer on the weekend nights. The findings suggest that physical activity has important boundary conditions-psychological detachment and sleep duration-that influence its recovery effects on NA. The complex relationship between exercise and recovery is discussed, along with the implications of the findings for future research.

A Meta-Analysis on Antecedents and Outcomes of Detachment from Work

Detachment from work has been proposed as an important non-work experience helping employees to recover from work demands. This meta-analysis (86 publications, k = 91 independent study samples, N = 38,124 employees) examined core antecedents and outcomes of detachment in employee samples. With regard to outcomes, results indicated average positive correlations between detachment and self-reported mental (i.e., less exhaustion, higher life satisfaction, more well-being, better sleep) and physical (i.e., lower physical discomfort) health, state well-being (i.e., less fatigue, higher positive affect, more intensive state of recovery), and task performance (small to medium sized effects). However, average relationships between detachment and physiological stress indicators and work motivation were not significant while associations with contextual performance and creativity were significant, but negative. Concerning work characteristics, as expected, job demands were negatively related and job resources were positively related to detachment (small sized effects). Further, analyses revealed that person characteristics such as negative affectivity/neuroticism (small sized effect) and heavy work investment (medium sized effect) were negatively related to detachment whereas detachment and demographic variables (i.e., age and gender) were not related. Moreover, we found a medium sized average negative relationship between engagement in work-related activities during non-work time and detachment. For most of the examined relationships heterogeneity of effect sizes was moderate to high. We identified study design, samples' gender distribution, and affective valence of work-related thoughts as moderators for some of these aforementioned relationships. The results of this meta-analysis point to detachment as a non-work (recovery) experience that is influenced by work-related and personal characteristics which in turn is relevant for a range of employee outcomes.

Cultural leisure activities, recovery and work engagement among hospital employees

This study explored the relationship between cultural leisure activities, recovery experiences and two outcomes among hospital workers. The differences in recovery experiences (detachment, relaxation, mastery and control) and outcomes (work engagement and subjective recovery state) among hospital personnel (N=769) were analysed by the type (receptive or creative) and frequency of cultural activities. The cross-sectional data were collected by a digital questionnaire. Employees who reported both receptive and creative cultural leisure activities on a weekly basis had the highest relaxation, mastery and control experiences during off-job time. In addition, those with weekly creative activities had beneficial mastery experiences. There were no differences in recovery outcomes after adjustment for age, except in work engagement. Cultural leisure activities, and creative activities in particular, play an important role in certain aspects of recovery.

Work-Related Smartphone Use and Well-Being in the Evening

Recent research has revealed that use of smartphones for work in the evening is associated with lower well-being. In this study, based on self-determination theory, we examined the role of autonomous and controlled motivation for well-being in the evening. Hierarchical regression analyses using data from 1,714 working individuals revealed that work-related smartphone usage in the evening was positively related to psychological detachment, but unrelated to recovery and negative affect, and negatively related to positive affect. Autonomous motivation for smartphone usage in the evening was positively related to recovery, psychological detachment, and positive affect. Controlled motivation was significantly related to positive and negative affect in the expected direction. These results indicate that the motivation behind individuals’ smartphone use in the evening matters for their well-being.