Employee Recovery Research Articles

Daily within-fluctuations in need frustration and implications for employee recovery and well-being: A mixed-methods study.

Daily variations in frustration of basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) have received limited attention. This mixed-methods study examines such daily variations and their relations to recovery from work and employee well-being. The study uses multilevel modeling of repeated measures through daily surveys from a period of 8 working days across 2 consecutive weeks, combined with in-depth interviews. A sample of 54 Norwegian health-care workers completed a total of 242 daily surveys, and follow-up interviews were conducted with 10 participants. Quantitative results showed that need frustration at work fluctuates from day to day, with competence frustration notably impairing recovery (i.e., lower psychological detachment and relaxation) and increasing ill-being (i.e., higher exhaustion and negative work affect). Autonomy frustration was related to increased exhaustion and sleep complaints, while relatedness frustration showed no significant relation to recovery, ill-being, or sleep. Qualitative findings corroborated and expanded on these results, offering deepened insights into how competence and, sometimes, relatedness need frustration hampered the recovery process and sleep. The results of the current study add to the scarce body of literature on daily fluctuations in need frustration at work and its adverse consequences.

Leader support for recovery: A multi‐level approach to employee psychological detachment from work

AbstractThis research examines the role of leaders for employee recovery. We hypothesize that leader support for recovery (empathy for recovery, respect for boundaries, and role modelling) relates positively to employees' psychological detachment from work during non‐work time that, in turn, predicts well‐being outcomes. We argue that leader support for recovery can only be effective when the leader‐member exchange (LMX) relationship quality is sufficiently high. In a series of scale‐development and scale‐validation studies, we demonstrated the construct and content validity of a new measure of leader support for recovery. We tested our hypotheses with diary data collected from 152 employees. Respect for boundaries was positively related to employees' psychological detachment from work during non‐work time at the person level. Psychological detachment from work was positively related to low emotional exhaustion and a high morning recovery state, both at the person and the day level. LMX moderated the relationship between leader support for recovery (overall measure), empathy for recovery, and respect for boundaries on the one hand and psychological detachment on the other hand, such that the relationships became non‐significant when LMX was lower. The study suggests that leaders in high‐quality relationships can contribute to employee recovery – a process that helps to maintain employee well‐being.

Mitigating Workplace Burnout Through Transformational Leadership and Employee Participation in Recovery Experiences.

Description Burnout is a complex organizational phenomenon that diminishes employee well-being and overall organizational productivity. Researchers propose that leadership style contributes to employees' well-being, which impacts employee productivity. Organizations and leaders must address the causes of burnout and promote techniques employees can use to mitigate burnout, such as employee participation in recovery experiences. Recovery experiences are non-work activities that create positive outlooks and restore the energy needed to focus on one's work. This literature review examines current research in employee recovery experiences, conservation of resource theory (COR), burnout, and transformational leadership theory. Studying burnout through the lens of COR shows how important resource gain and recovery activities are to healthy employees and their job performance within the organization. The research reviewed suggests that transformational and transactional leadership styles have higher probabilities of promoting employee participation in recovery experiences than passive avoidant leadership style. The literature consistently showed burnout as a significant organizational phenomenon negatively affecting productivity, employee well-being, and turnover rates. The literature revealed that mitigating burnout happens through participation in recovery experiences. The literature on leadership styles supports the assumption that leaders play a significant role in employee well-being, group identity, and organizational climate. Leaders who desire to mitigate employee burnout will benefit from research that links transformational leadership style behaviors and employee participation in recovery activities.

Kebutuhan untuk Pemulihan Dalam Perspektif Perilaku Organisasional: Sebuah Studi Literatur

This article discusses the concept of the need for recovery in the context of work well-beingand productivity. Understanding the need for recovery is expected to help design effectivestrategies for managing work stress, improving employee performance, and buildingorganizational resilience to unexpected events. This research uses a qualitative approachwith a literature study design. This article discusses the significant implications the need forrecovery has on individuals and organizations, and provides practical suggestions fordesigning work environments that support employee recovery. In conclusion, awareness andsupport of recovery needs not only creates a productive work environment but alsocontributes to employees' work and personal life balance. The recovery program initiative isexpected to be a competitive force for organizations in achieving long-term growth andsustainability.

The role of strategic recovery in achieving strategic success

The study aims to reveal the role of strategic recovery, represented by its dimensions (customer recovery, process recovery, employee recovery) in achieving strategic success, expressed in its dimensions (survival, adaptation, growth). The research methodology relied on the descriptive approach in collecting and analyzing data to reach the results. For the purposes of collecting data, the researchers used a questionnaire as the main research tool, and it was distributed to the research sample (300) managers from a population of (780) managers, and the respondents reached (214) managers. The data were analyzed using SPSS V28, and one of the most important findings of this research is the existence of a strong and positive correlation between strategic recovery in its dimensions and strategic success, as well as the presence of a significant effect of strategic recovery in strategic success at the macro and dimensional levels. Based on the conclusions, a number of recommendations were presented, the most important of which is that administrative leaders must pay attention to the quality of service before strategic recovery, diagnose the reason for the occurrence of failure in providing their services, and learn from them so as not to repeat them in the future because customers in the Kurdistan Region cannot bear material and moral damage twice.

Roads to recovery in remote working. Exploration of the perceptions of energy-consuming elements of remote work and self-promoted strategies toward psychological detachment

PurposeThis paper examines an employee's recovery process in the remote-working context. It explores which elements of remote work are energy-consuming for employees and what action they can take to instigate the essential recovery strategy of psychological detachment.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a qualitative research approach based on 89 semi-structured interviews with employees working from home with six large corporations from multiple industries. The data were interpreted using thematic analysis.FindingsThe study identifies a main theme – the energy-consuming elements of remote work – and three sub-themes: extended working hours, intensive working and reduced social support. Each theme incorporates elements controlled by individuals (internal) and those beyond their control (external). Second, the authors identified strategies that helped individuals to detach from work, and devised four sub-themes, the authors labeled cognitive controlling, physical disconnection from work, time-bound routines and non-work activities.Originality/valueThis is the first study to focus on recovery as a process in the context of remote working, and it contributes to the knowledge of psychological detachment and strategies for recovery and to the literature on contemporary remote working.

New Explorations About Employee Recovery

New Explorations About Employee Recovery

Benefits of leaders' pleasurable recovery activities on follower performance via emotional contagion.

Recovery research has amply documented the benefits of employee recovery for their well-being and performance. However, most research to date has mainly focused on intraindividual benefits, so that we know relatively little about how focal employees' recovery activities might affect others at work. Bridging the gaps in the recovery and leadership literatures, this study focuses on leader-follower dyads and examines the interpersonal effects of leaders' recovery activities on followers' daily performance quality. In particular, our proposed model-which is informed by the conservation of resource and emotional contagion theories-explains the spillover-crossover process by which leaders' pleasurable recovery activity at home influences their positive affect (PA) displays at work, their followers' PA, and ultimately followers' task performance and creative behavior. We conducted two experience sampling method studies that relied on leader-member dyads of full-time working adults who responded to multiple online surveys for five workdays (n₁ = 511 daily observations) and 10 workdays (n₂ = 576 daily observations). In both studies, multilevel path analyses showed that leaders' previous-night pleasurable recovery activity leads to increased morning PA displays at work (observed by followers), which in turn crosses over to followers' midday PA and positive work outcomes. In particular, the affective crossover from leaders to followers was stronger when followers were in an inadequate morning recovery state and, therefore, more in need of resource replenishment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Neurocognitive and Symptom Validity Testing for Post-COVID-19 Condition in a Workers Compensation Context.

Efficacy of a neurocognitive screening evaluation (NCSE) in assessing symptoms and disability associated with post-COVID-19 condition (PCC) and facilitating employee recovery and return to work was evaluated. An NCSE was administered to 64 employees off work because of neurocognitive complaints attributed to post-COVID-19 condition. Neurocognitive and symptom validity data were analyzed along with recovery and return-to-work timelines. A large percentage of the employees gave invalid responses and noncredible effort on psychological and cognitive tests (48%). The NCSEs with invalid profiles suggested more severe cognitive and psychiatric symptoms than valid profiles. Both valid and invalid groups had significant reductions in illness duration and lost workdays after the NCSE. Post-COVID-19 condition resulted in reports of mild to moderate cognitive and psychiatric symptoms with extensive mean work leave of 11 months before mental health assessment. Regardless of symptom validity, after the NCSE, the employees were released to work at an average of 3 weeks.

A Work Time Control Tradeoff in Flexible Work: Competitive Pathways to Need for Recovery

Work time control may offer opportunities, but also implies risks for employee recovery, influenced by increased work-related ICT use and overtime work. However, this risk-opportunity tradeoff remains understudied. This study aimed to test two different models of associations between work time control, work-related ICT use, overtime work, and the need for recovery. These models were constructed based on data on office workers with flexible work arrangements. Cross-sectional data were obtained with questionnaires (n = 2582) from employees in a Swedish multi-site organization. Regression models treated the three determinants of the need for recovery either as independent, or as linked in a causal sequence. The test of independent determinants confirmed that more work time control was associated with less need for recovery, whereas more ICT use and overtime work were associated with a higher need for recovery. In a test of serial mediation, more work time control contributed to a greater need for recovery through more ICT use and then more overtime work. Work time control also had a competitive, indirect effect through a negative association with overtime work. Our results suggest that work time control is beneficial for employee recovery, but may for some be associated with more work-related ICT use after regular working hours, thus increasing recovery needs. Policies that support work time control can promote recovery, but employers must attend to the risk of excessive use of ICT outside of regular working hours.

Facilitating Employee Recovery From Work: The Role of Leader-Member-Exchange

Building on Affective Events Theory (AET), this study examined within-person relationships between employee perceptions of day-level leader-member exchange (LMX) and day-level positive affect as well as between positive affect and recovery from work in the evening (i.e., relaxation, mastery, control, and psychological detachment from work). In addition, LMX variability was examined as a moderator of these within-person relationships. Employees (N = 160) completed surveys at the end of the workday and in the evening across five consecutive workdays. Results indicate direct relationships between perceptions of LMX and employee positive affect at work. In addition, positive affect was positively associated with two of the four recovery experiences (mastery and relaxation). Furthermore, LMX variability across the workweek moderated these positive indirect effects such that the indirect associations between the perceptions of LMX and employees’ recovery experiences during the evening via positive affect was only positive when LMX variability was low. The indirect effects, however, were nonsignificant when LMX variability was moderate or high. The present study expands LMX research by adopting a dynamic within-person perspective and by connecting the literature on workplace leadership with the literature on recovery from work, indicating that perceptions of LMX can potentially impact employees’ nonwork time.

Craft a job better, recover better? The roles of work-nonwork conflict and work demands.

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this two-wave study investigated the mediating role of work-nonwork conflict in the relationship between job crafting and employee recovery experience and examined the moderating role of work demands in this relationship. Participants were 486 employees (39.3% male and 60.7% female) from a medical company in the central region of China who responded to a paper-and-pencil survey twice with a 1-month interval. Regression-based results indicated that job crafting positively predicted recovery experience after work through lower work-nonwork conflict. Furthermore, the association between job crafting and work-nonwork conflict was moderated by work demands, such that the effect was stronger for employees with higher work demands. The present study explains how job crafting may improve employees' after-work recovery experience and addresses whether this process could be more significant for employees with higher work demands. The conclusion has practical implications for improving employee recovery experience.

Does looking forward set you back? Development and validation of the work prospection scale

ABSTRACT Findings from adjacent literatures suggest that thinking about the future may have implications for employee health, especially when such thoughts are affectively toned. However, existing constructs targeting work-related thinking are predominantly time-unspecific, possibly overlooking a substantial portion of work-related cognitions that occur on a daily basis. We therefore develop a comprehensive, multidimensional conceptualization of work prospection, as well as an instrument (Work Prospection Scale; WPS) that allows the measurement of three types of work prospection (cognitive, positive affective, and negative affective). We place work prospection in its wider nomological network and evaluate its validity across three cross-sectional studies (total N = 825) and a 5-day diary study (N = 199). Psychometric properties of the scale were supported across studies, and the WPS was related to, yet empirically distinct from related constructs. Criterion-related results showed that positive affective work prospection during the evening was associated with less fatigue and more recovery in the next morning. Conversely, negative affective work prospection was related to more evening fatigue, as well as less next morning recovery. Cognitive work prospection had no significant relationship with recovery indicators. Additionally, our findings show that targeting future-oriented cognitions adds to the prediction of employee recovery beyond time-unspecific measures.

Data breach recovery areas: an exploration of organization's recovery strategies for surviving data breaches

PurposeData breaches are an increasing phenomenon in today's digital society. Despite the preparations an organization must take to prevent a data breach, it is still necessary to develop strategies in the event of a data breach. This paper explores the key recovery areas necessary for data breach recovery.Design/methodology/approachStakeholder theory and three recovery areas (customer, employee and process recovery) are proposed as necessary theoretical lens to study data breach recovery. Three data breach cases (Anthem, Equifax, and Citrix) were presented to provide merit to the argument of the proposed theoretical foundations of stakeholder theory and recovery areas for data breach recovery research.FindingsInsights from these cases reveal four areas of recovery are necessary for data breach recovery – customer recovery, employee recovery, process recovery and regulatory recovery.Originality/valueThese areas are presented in the data recovery areas model and are necessary for: (1) organizations to focus on these areas when resolving data breaches and (2) future data breach recovery researchers in developing their research in the field.

Employee health and well-being after a crisis – re-imagining the role of workplace inclusion

ABSTRACT Covid-19 left many employees with life-altering challenges— deaths or illnesses of loved ones, health problems, and economic upheavals. Even during ordinary years, adverse events affect around 50% of employees, exacerbating work/non-work demands and depleting personal resources. In order to identify supports for employee recovery from the pandemic and similar crises, we examine inclusive relational practices. Drawing on a conservation-of-resources framework, we posit that inclusive practices are a greater resource for employees following adverse life-events. Using data on U.S. employees from the 2016 National Study of the Changing Workforce, we examine relationships between workplace inclusion and self-rated health, presenteeism and work-to-personal/family spillover. We find that inclusive practices are negatively associated with poorer health/well-being, with benefits significantly higher for employees following adverse life-events. Our study contributes to work-life and diversity-inclusion scholarships by studying dimensions of inclusion rarely captured in nationally-representative data and replicating prior evidence in a more diverse sample of U.S. employees. This is the first study to investigate the role of relational practices among coworkers and between employees and their leaders, in aiding recovery following adverse life-events. Findings indicate that workplace inclusion may be an underutilized resource for supporting recovery from the pandemic and in a post-Covid world.

What Leaders Do Matters: Supervisor Support for Recovery and Employee Recovery

Research suggests that leaders play an important role in employees’ recovery from work stress. Very little research to date has examined leader behaviors that promote or inhibit employees’ recovery. This study aims to better understand the nature and impacts of recovery-supportive supervisory behaviors. Specifically, we (1) proposed an expanded conceptualization of supervisor support for recovery, (2) developed and validated a measure consistent with this expanded conceptualization, and (3) examined the effect of supervisor support for recovery on employee recovery. In Study 1, we conducted a qualitative study to identify the dimensional structure of supervisor support for recovery. Based on the qualitative data, we conceptualized it as a multidimensional construct with four dimensions: not communicating about work during nonwork time, not requiring work during nonwork time, modeling recovery, and encouraging recovery. In Studies 2 and 3, we developed and validated a scale to measure supervisor support for recovery. We found that supervisor support for recovery was distinct from other leadership constructs (e.g., perceived supervisor support, family supportive supervisor behaviors, and transformational leadership) and explained additional variances in psychological detachment and burnout above and beyond the three similar leadership constructs. Relative importance analysis suggested that supervisor support for recovery was more important than the other three similar constructs in predicting psychological detachment, but perceived supervisor support was the most important predictor in predicting burnout. Implications for future research are discussed.

The implications of knowledge hiding at work for recovery after work: A diary study

Past research on at-work predictors of after-work recovery mainly focused on what happened to someone at work. Yet, employees also act at work, and their own behavior and its consequences likely affect their ability to recover as well. Based on this premise, we bring together recovery research and research on moral behavior in organizations, examining the intrapersonal consequences of knowledge hiding, the intentional attempt to withhold knowledge that others have requested, for employee recovery. Specifically, we propose that knowledge hiding poses a moral dilemma, and thus has both positive (lower exhaustion) and negative (lower performance) intraindividual consequences that represent two opposing pathways to recovery in terms of work-related remorse in the evening and vigor the next morning. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a diary study across ten workdays, analyzing 517 daily reports from 152 participants. The results of multilevel path modeling suggest that day-specific knowledge hiding (in the form of playing dumb) can have both good (i.e., saving energy resources) and bad (i.e., low immediate performance) outcomes that cancel each other out in predicting evening work-related remorse. Evening remorse was negatively related to next-morning vigor. By considering how employees’ remorse affects their knowledge hiding, we meaningfully extend recovery research, showing that employees’ reflections on their own actions affect their post-work recovery processes and outcomes.

You get me: Examining the implications of couples’ depersonalization agreement for employee recovery

AbstractPrevious research demonstrates that depersonalization is harmful for employee outcomes. In addition, research is beginning to examine employees’ family context along with their experiences both at work and at home. We advance these literatures using shared reality theory as a foundation for investigating couples’ dyadic agreement surrounding employee depersonalization and its implications. Using polynomial regression and response surface methodology of data from employee‐significant other dyads, in Study 1, we find that agreement between partners on employee depersonalization is associated with lower work‐to‐family conflict (following general shared reality theory arguments) and increased subsequent recovery for the employee. In Study 2, we examine more specific shared reality theory arguments using the same analytic approach. We show that agreement between partners on employee depersonalization is associated with less distress and an increased perception that one's depersonalization is understood, and ultimately increased recovery for the employee via reductions in distress. Taken together, these results suggest the harmful effects of depersonalization are largely minimized if an employee's partner accurately recognizes their depersonalization. Interestingly, our collective results show it is better for employees to have agreement with their partners surrounding a high level of employee depersonalization than have low levels of depersonalization accompanied by disagreement.

Examining the interplay of micro-break durations and activities for employee recovery: A mixed-methods investigation.

On a given workday, employees spend time at work doing tasks that are not work-related, potentially using these micro-breaks (i.e., short breaks that are less than 10 min) to attempt to recover depleted psychological resources such as energy and attention. However, most work break and recovery research has focused on how individuals recover from work during formal nonwork time with longer or unspecified time durations (e.g., lunch breaks, evenings, vacations), limiting theoretical and empirical understanding of whether employees can experience recovery within the workday via brief micro-breaks. In the current investigation, we first conducted interviews from 16 shift workers at a Fortune 500 company to develop research questions about how micro-breaks impact psychological resources and recovery experiences. We then used a randomized experiment with a sample of undergraduate students (n = 232) to test the impact of micro-break durations and activities on the recovery of psychological resources (i.e., energy and attention) and recovery experiences. Results show that some, but not all, micro-break conditions can help employees recover back to their baseline (i.e., prework task) levels of psychological resources following a micro-break. Overall, this experiment provides stronger levels of causal inference about the recovery process and presents new ideas regarding how micro-break durations influence well-being via psychological resource recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Recovery experiences buffer against adverse well‐being effects of workplace surface acting: A two‐wave study of hospital nurses

To test the direct effects of different surface acting strategies and the interactive effects of surface acting and recovery experiences on nurses' well-being. A two-wave study design. Chinese hospital nurses (N=372; 47.3% of initial sample) reported on their levels of surface acting, recovery experiences and well-being using a paper and pencil survey in November 2017 and November 2018. Surface acting has long-term effects on nurses' well-being. Compared with positive expression, negative suppression generally tends to show more negative effects. Recovery experiences play a buffering role in the surface acting - nurses' well-being relationship. These findings offer initial evidence for long-term effects of surface acting and show how hospital nurses can avoid adverse effects of surface acting through fostering recovery experiences. Surface acting is a chronic stressor, having long-term effects on nurses' well-being. In contrast to positive expression, negative suppression has more detrimental impacts. Recovery experiences play a protective role by alleviating the adverse effects of surface acting. Managers and individuals are advised to differentiate distinct surface acting strategies. Managers should try best to facilitate employee recovery. Hospital nurses are well recommended to train themselves by adopting several recovery programmes.