Abstract
Unfinished tasks have been identified as a significant job stressor that impairs employee recovery after work. Classic experimental research by Ovsiankina has shown that people tend to resume yet unfinished tasks to satisfy their need for closure. We apply this notion to current working life and examine supplemental work after hours as a means to achieve peace of mind. We investigate how progress towards goal accomplishment through supplemental work may facilitate recovery in terms of psychological detachment, relaxation, autonomy, and mastery experiences. We conducted a week-level diary study among 83 employees over a period of 14 consecutive weeks, which yielded 575 observations in total and 214 matched observations of unfinished tasks, supplemental work during the weekend, progress, and recovery experiences. Unfinished tasks were assessed on Friday. Supplemental work and recovery experiences were assessed on Monday. Multilevel modeling analyses provide evidence that unfinished tasks at the end of the work week are associated with lower levels of detachment at the intraindividual level, tend to relate to lower relaxation, but are unrelated to autonomy and mastery. Progress towards finishing tasks during the weekend alleviates the detrimental effects of unfinished tasks on both kinds of recovery experiences. Supplemental work is negatively linked to detachment, but largely unrelated to the other recovery experiences.
Highlights
Recent research in the domain of occupational health psychology has noted that unfinished tasks at the end of the work week act as a threat to successful recovery during the weekend [1]
Given the ubiquity of opportunities to resume work in leisure time in today’s working life, for instance by using information and communication technology (ICT) [6,7], we suggest that the Ovsiankina effect may be highly relevant to understand supplemental work in leisure time and its effects on recovery
To gain a more comprehensive picture of how unfinished tasks and progress towards finishing them may affect recovery during the weekend, we focus on four major facets of recovery experiences that have been conceptualized in the literature [17], namely psychological detachment, relaxation, autonomy or control, and experiences of mastery
Summary
Recent research in the domain of occupational health psychology has noted that unfinished tasks at the end of the work week act as a threat to successful recovery during the weekend [1]. This line of current applied research is rooted in classic experimental laboratory research and the so-called Zeigarnik effect [2], which states that there is a memory advantage for unfinished tasks compared to finished tasks [3]. We continue this line of current occupational stress research and apply another phenomenon rooted in classic experimental work on field theory [4]: The Ovsiankina effect [5]. On the one hand, being preoccupied with work during leisure time is likely to impair recovery in terms of work to home interference [8] or lack of psychological detachment [9,10]
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