Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

1-2017

Abstract

The current study investigates the benefits of a good night’s sleep and short work breaks for employees’ daily work engagement. It is hypothesized that sleep and self-initiated short breaks help restore energetic and self-regulatory resources which, in turn, enable employees to experience high work engagement. A daily diary study was conducted with 107 employees who provided data twice a day (before lunch and at the end of the working day) over 5 workdays (453 days in total). Multilevel regression analyses showed that sleep quality and short breaks were beneficial for employees’ daily work engagement. After nights employees slept better, they indicated higher work engagement during the day. Moreover, taking self-initiated short breaks from work in the afternoon boosted daily work engagement, whereas taking short breaks in the morning failed to predict daily work engagement. Taking short breaks did not compensate for impaired sleep with regard to daily work engagement. Overall, these findings suggest that recovery before and during work can foster employees’ daily work engagement.

Keywords

energy management, recovery, sleep, Work breaks, work engagement

Discipline

Human Resources Management | Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology

Volume

26

Issue

4

First Page

481

Last Page

491

ISSN

1359-432X

Identifier

10.1080/1359432X.2016.1269750

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge): STM, Behavioural Science and Public Health Titles

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2016.1269750

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