Summary Workdays are the main temporal building blocks of people's experiences at work, and many factors potentially contribute to having a good versus a bad day at work. Still, empirical findings on ...these ingredients are scattered and a bigger picture is missing. This article reviews day‐level and experience‐sampling studies ( k = 382 studies) to describe what makes for a good versus bad day at work. We derive outcome criteria for good versus bad days from the circumplex model of effect and identify specific pre‐work factors (sleep, pre‐work events, and pre‐work experiences) and at‐work factors (situational conditions, states and experiences, behaviors, results of one's actions, and work breaks) as their core ingredients. We highlight temporal trends in this rapidly growing research area and critically assess the current state of the literature with respect to theoretical and methodological issues. We link empirical findings that have emerged from our literature review to a homeostatic human sustainability perspective, offer directions for future research, and discuss the practical implementation of research findings.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Sleep affects employees' functioning. In this study, we differentiate biological (chronotype), quantitative (daily sleep duration), and qualitative (daily sleep quality) sleep characteristics and ...examine their relationship with the trajectory of employees' vigor over the course of the day. Building on the two-process model of sleep regulation and the job demands-resources model, we examine whether sleep characteristics are differentially related to the trajectory of vigor as an energetic state. Furthermore, we expect that favorable sleep characteristics have a protective function during the workday in the interplay with daily job demands (workload) and job resources (autonomy). We conducted an experience-sampling study across ten workdays with three daily measurement occasions (171 employees, 1,631 days, 4,351 measurement occasions). Multilevel growth curve modeling showed that, on average, vigor followed a positive quadratic daily trajectory, mainly characterized by a decrease in vigor over the course of the day-after a slight increase early in the day. The decrease in vigor was particularly strong after nights with high sleep quality and for employees with an early chronotype. However, the relation between sleep quality and decrease in vigor occurred only on days with high workload. These results emphasize the importance of looking at the differential effects of sleep characteristics and on-the-job experiences on employees' energetic state during the day. These findings provide helpful suggestions on how to structure work and leisure time.
Full text
Available for:
CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ, UPUK
Summary
Circadian processes are important for employees and organizations yet have been relatively underexplored in recovery research. Thus, we embed the concept of circadian misalignment into the ...recovery literature by investigating the moderating role of employees' daily social sleep lag (i.e., a discrepancy between employees' actual and biologically preferred sleep–wake times) in their recovery processes. Building on the effort‐recovery model and a circadian perspective on recovery, we propose that low relaxation and mastery experiences explain the relationship between workplace interpersonal conflicts and low next‐morning vigor. Concerning circadian misalignment, we investigated whether daily social sleep lag impedes the occurrence and effectiveness of after‐work recovery experiences (i.e., moderates the relationships with interpersonal conflicts and vigor, respectively). Results of a daily diary study with 274 employees (1926 days) demonstrated that low mastery experiences, but not relaxation, explained the negative association between interpersonal conflicts and next‐morning vigor. Additionally, mastery experiences translated less to next‐morning vigor on days with high (vs. low) social sleep lag. Investigating circadian misalignment can thus help determine under which circumstances employees best recover from work, highlighting the need to take circadian processes into account in recovery research.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Summary
The weekend constitutes an important recovery period for employees. However, psychologically reattaching to work on Monday can be difficult because employees must transition from their ...private to their work role. Building on boundary theory and integrating a sleep and circadian perspective, we shed light on this transition by investigating antecedents and outcomes of Monday reattachment. We propose that three weekend sleep characteristics differentially relate to reattachment on Monday: weekend sleep quality, catch‐up sleep (extended sleep duration on the weekend), and social sleep lag (differences in sleep times workweek vs. weekend). Successful reattachment on Monday should, in turn, be related to lower levels of exhaustion and higher task performance during the workweek. We conducted a weekly diary study with 310 employees (933 weeks) over four workweeks. Two‐level path models demonstrated that higher weekend sleep quality was indirectly related to lower levels of workweek exhaustion via higher levels of Monday reattachment. In contrast, higher catch‐up sleep was related to higher levels of workweek exhaustion via lower levels of Monday reattachment. Accordingly, we demonstrate that Monday reattachment can set the tone for the entire workweek, but the capability to reattach can depend on weekend sleep as a core recovery process.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Health behaviors (physical activity and healthy eating) can be an essential part of everyday work life and are relevant for employees' affective states. Many worksite interventions, including ...goal‐striving approaches, have been developed to promote health behavior at work. However, these approaches often neglect that making progress with respect to health‐behavior goals necessarily takes place during workday episodes, so that work tasks are accomplished simultaneously. In our study, we aim to advance the understanding of how health‐behavior goal progress is facilitated and how reflecting on it evokes affective states—taking into account simultaneous pursuit of work‐task progress. We collected daily diary data from 205 employees on 1399 days. Analyses showed that goal importance positively predicted health‐behavior goal progress, which in turn positively predicted pride and negatively predicted shame at the end of the workday. The negative relation between health‐behavior goal progress and shame was stronger on days with low work‐task progress, implying compensatory effects. Work‐task progress did not moderate the relation between health‐behavior goal progress and pride. We discuss the theoretical and practical relevance of integrating research on multiple goal striving when promoting health behavior in daily work life by means of goal‐striving techniques.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
While regular physical exercise as a recovery activity has an important role regarding employees’ well-being, employees seem to engage less in physical exercise after stressful workdays—pointing to a ...paradoxical pattern. Extending the recovery paradox (Sonnentag, 2018) applied to physical exercise and drawing from perspectives on energetic and self-regulatory resource loss and recovery, we integrate psychological detachment right after work as an explaining psychological mechanism in the paradoxical pattern between job stressors, physical exercise, and energetic well-being. We collected daily diary data from 93 employees on 514 days over two consecutive workweeks. Results of our two-level path model suggest that psychological detachment right after work explains the paradoxical pattern between job stressors (workload and self-control demands) and time spent on physical exercise. However, we did not find a serial indirect effect from job stressors to next-morning energetic well-being (vigor and fatigue) via psychological detachment and time spent on physical exercise. Our study suggests a new perspective on the role of psychological detachment, namely as a prerequisite instead of an outcome of physical exercise after stressful workdays. This new perspective has implications for future research and practical interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
Full text
Available for:
CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ, UPUK
Eating healthily in terms of fruit and vegetable consumption has beneficial effects for employees and their organisations. Yet, we know little about how employees' eating behaviour develops over ...longer periods of time (trajectories) as well as about how subgroups of employees in these trajectories differ (trajectory classes). Gaining such insights is critical to understand how employees address healthy eating recommendations over time as well as to develop individualised interventions that also consider the development of healthy eating (i.e. improvement versus impairment beyond mean levels). We analysed panel data (Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences) from 1054 employees by means of growth mixture modelling. Our analyses revealed three relevant classes of healthy-eating trajectories: a favourable trajectory class, an unfavourable trajectory class and a strongly improving trajectory class. Furthermore, unfavourable healthy-eating trajectories were especially critical with respect to impaired psychological well-being. Specifically, we found robust results for impaired positive and negative affects, but not for self-esteem, in the unfavourable trajectory class. We discuss limitations and implications of these findings, thereby encouraging research and practice to further consider such fine-grained approaches (i.e. focusing on subgroups within a larger population) when addressing healthy-eating promotion over time.
Full text
Available for:
FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Worldwide, over 70 countries advance their clocks in spring to Daylight Saving Time. Previous research has already demonstrated that the clock change negatively impacts employees at work. However, ...this research implicitly assumed that the clock change affects everyone to the same extent. In the current study, we propose that the massively prevalent Daylight Saving Time transition may have an effect on employees’ sleep and their work engagement that is dependent upon employees’ chronotype.
We conducted a longitudinal study with 155 full-time employees who filled out online surveys on three Mondays around the transition to Daylight Saving Time.
Results showed that the transition to Daylight Saving Time resulted in decreased work engagement measured 1day as well as 1week after the transition to Daylight Saving Time. Lower sleep quality (but not shorter sleep duration) partly explained this effect. The negative effect of the transition to Daylight Saving Time on work engagement 1day after the transition was more pronounced for employees with later chronotypes (“owls”) than for those with earlier chronotypes (“larks”).
In summary, our study shows that the transition to Daylight Saving Time has an adverse short-time impact on private life and working life and should, therefore, also be considered in organizations. Because later chronotypes are especially prone to adverse effects of the transition, interventions targeted for this group might be especially helpful.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•An experimental investigation of panel conditioning effects of an ego-centered social network modules in a web survey.•The theories of motivated underreporting and survey satisficing suggest panel ...conditioning effects.•Results showed that reported network sizes possibly suffered from panel conditioning, while network densities did not.•Respondents’ ability and motivation did not affect these results.•We encourage further exploration into the implementation of ego-centered social network modules in self-administered surveys.
This article investigates the data quality of ego-centered social network modules in web surveys. It specifically examines whether these modules are subject to the effects of the repeated measurement of the same questions known as panel conditioning effects. Ego-centered social network modules are especially at risk of panel conditioning effects because many of the components in these modules are repetitive. Based on the theories of motivated underreporting and survey satisficing, we hypothesized that respondents reduce the length of the module by underreporting their network size and/or network density. To systematically test for panel conditioning effects, we experimentally varied the treatment frequency in a longitudinal study design, which included three panel waves. The results of our study showed that we generally obtained high quality data with relatively large reported network sizes and densities, low rates of item non-response, and low non-differentiation. In contrast to our expectations, the reported average network sizes were not smaller, and the network densities were not lower when respondents were asked to answer the same social network module multiple times. We found, however, patterns of individual change in network sizes that might be due to panel conditioning. Respondents with large network sizes in a panel wave reported smaller network sizes in the subsequent wave, while respondents with small network sizes reported larger network sizes in the subsequent wave. Respondents’ ability and motivation did not affect these results. Thus, we would like to encourage researchers to further explore the opportunity of implementing ego-centered social network modules in cross-sectional as well as longitudinal self-administered surveys, while being cautious that in longitudinal surveys the chance of panel conditioning effects may increase with the average network size and the response burden of the network module.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A large part of biodiversity theory is driven by the basic question of what allows species to coexist in spite of a confined number of niches. A substantial theoretical background to this question is ...provided by modern coexistence theory (MCT), which rests on mathematical approaches of invasion analysis to categorize underlying mechanisms into factors that reduce either niche overlap (stabilizing mechanisms) or the average fitness differences of species (equalizing mechanisms). While MCT has inspired biodiversity theory in the search for these underlying mechanisms, we feel that the strong focus on coexistence causes a bias toward the most abundant species and neglects the plethora of species that are less abundant and often show high local turnover. Given the more stochastic nature of their occurrence, we advocate a complementary cross‐level approach that links individuals, small populations, and communities and explicitly takes into account (1) a more complete inclusion of environmental and demographic stochasticity affecting small populations, (2) intraspecific trait variation and behavioral plasticity, and (3) local heterogeneities, interactions, and feedbacks. Focusing on mechanisms that drive the temporary coviability of species rather than infinite coexistence, we suggest a new approach that could be dubbed coviability analysis (CVA). From a modeling perspective, CVA builds on the merged approaches of individual‐based modeling and population viability analysis but extends them to the community level. From an empirical viewpoint, CVA calls for a stronger integration of spatiotemporal data on variability and noise, changing drivers, and interactions at the level of individuals. The resulting large volumes of data from multiple sources could be strongly supported by novel techniques tailored to the discovery of complex patterns in high‐dimensional data. By complementing MCT through a stronger focus on the coviability of less common species, this approach can help make modern biodiversity theory more comprehensive, predictive, and relevant for applications.
Full text
Available for:
FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
PDF