Micro‐break activities at work to recover from daily work demands

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2109
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Author: Qikun Niu,Sooyeol Kim,YoungAh Park
• Date: 01 January 2017

Micro-break activities at work to recover from

daily work demands

SOOYEOL KIM

1

*, YOUNGAH PARK

1

AND QIKUN NIU

2

1

School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Champaign, Illinois,

U.S.A.

2

Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.A.

Summary Recovery literature has focused predominantly on recovery processes outside the workplace during nonwork

times. Considering a lack of research on momentary recovery at work, we examined four categories of micro-

break activities—relaxation, nutrition-intake, social, and cognitive activities—as possible recovery mecha-

nisms in the workplace. Using effort recovery and conservation of resources theories, we hypothesized that

micro-break activities attenuate the common stressor–strain relationship between work demands and negative

affect. For 10 consecutive workdays, 86 South Korean office workers (842 data points) reported their specific

daily work demands right after their lunch hour (Time 1) and then reported their engagement in micro-break

activities during the afternoon and negative affective state at the end of the workday (Time 2). As expected,

relaxation and social activities reduced the effects of work demands on end-of-workday negative affect. Nutri-

tion intake of beverages and snacks did not have a significant moderating effect. Post hoc analyses, however,

revealed that only caffeinated beverages reduced work demands effects on negative affect. Unexpectedly, cog-

nitive activities aggravated the effects of work demands on negative affect. The findings indicate not only the

importance of taking micro-breaks but also which types of break activities are beneficial for recovery. Impli-

cations, limitations, and future research directions are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: micro-break activities; negative affect; momentary recovery; work demands

John drinks a cup of coffee and checks his friends’news feeds. Next to John’s cubicle, Jennifer chats with her col-

league about a new movie trailer. Ron leans back in his office chair for a short nap, while Rachel strolls around the

office. Organizational research has largely ignored these common examples of employees’nonwork behaviors be-

tween work tasks. Should managers consider such nonwork behaviors counterproductive, innocuous, or beneficial

to employee outcomes? In fact, nonwork activities during short breaks may help employees momentarily recover

from work stress (Trougakos & Hideg, 2009). Recovery from work refers to the phenomenon in which employees

undo negative load reactions (e.g., fatigue) that accrue from continuous work and return to pre-stress functioning

(Meijman & Mulder, 1998). Then, are those informal, short respite activities beneficial for momentary recovery

from work demands?

Our purpose in this study is to examine respite activities during micro-breaks (hereinafter, micro-break activities)

that may help employees recuperate while at work. Specifically, we used a within-subject diary design to investigate

whether daily engagement in four types of micro-break activities—relaxation, nutrition-intake, social, and cognitive

activities—attenuates the most typical stressor–strain link that many employees experience at work on a daily basis:

work demands and end-of-workday negative affect (Ilies et al., 2007; Ilies, Dimotakis, & De Pater, 2010; Totterdell,

Wood, & Wall, 2006; Figure 1). In so doing, we seek to make several contributions to the recovery literature.

First, we extend the recovery literature by examining the largely understudied but common phenomenon of

micro-break activities on the job. Most recovery studies have focused predominantly on leisure and respite activities

for post-work recovery (see Demerouti, Bakker, Geurts, & Taris, 2009, for a review). Despite growing evidence that

*Correspondence to: Sooyeol Kim, School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC),

Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. E-mail: sooyeolkim@gmail.com

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 14 April 2015

Revised 11 March 2016, Accepted 30 March 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38,28–44 (2017)

Published online 2 May 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2109

Research Article

post-work recovery is important, little is known about effects of momentary recovery at work on employee strain or

well-being. Only two studies have examined respite activities during formally scheduled rest and lunch breaks

(Trougakos, Beal, Green, & Weiss, 2008; Trougakos, Hideg, Cheng, & Beal, 2014). However, aside from officially

scheduled breaks, many employees take informal micro-breaks between task episodes (Fritz, Lam, & Spreitzer,

2011; Trougakos & Hideg, 2009). Recovery research should consider micro-break activities because they have some

distinctive features. For example, compared with longer lasting respites during off-job times or formal work breaks,

micro-break activities are short-lived (Dababneh, Swanson, & Shell, 2001). As such, their recovery effects might be

fleeting but still effective because they are taken at workers’discretion on a need basis (Trougakos & Hideg, 2009).

Moreover, previous studies were limited to only a small set of break activities (i.e., relaxation and socialization;

Trougakos et al., 2008; Trougakos et al., 2014), and there is not enough evidence to guide organizations and em-

ployees for specific types of micro-break activities that are helpful for momentary recovery. Accordingly, re-

searchers call for more study of various micro-break activities and their effects on short-term recovery processes

(Fritz et al., 2011; Trougakos & Hideg, 2009). In this study, we answer the call to shed more light on this specific

recovery setting in the workplace.

Second, although two prior studies showed the main effects of at-work respite activities on strain outcomes

(Trougakos et al., 2008; Trougakos et al., 2014), no study has examined their moderating effects on the link between

work demands and strain. This is an important omission considering that recovery refers to recuperationfrom “nega-

tive load reactions”of work demands according to the effort-recovery (ER) theory (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). In

other words, as the purpose of recovery includes repairing negative effects of work stressors, it is imperative to exam-

ine micro-break activities in the presence of stressorssuch as work demands; that way, we can better test the theory and

understand the recovery-providing roles of micro-break activities (Demerouti et al., 2009;cf. Sonnentag, Binnewies,

& Mojza, 2010). Also, from the perspective of practical implications, moderation test results may convey an important

message that if employees pursue micro-break activities even when they face high work demands, they may not nec-

essarily experience high strain at the end of a workday. Taken together,we clarify potential roles that micro-break ac-

tivities play in employees’short-term recovery by testing their moderating effects on the stressor–strain link.

Third, a cross-sectional study on micro-breaks revealed that some of the respite activities (i.e., listening to music,

chatting, snacking, or drinking caffeinated beverages) had a positive association with fatigue unexpectedly (Fritz

et al., 2011). As this finding is based on bivariate cross-sectional correlations, it is not clear whether fatigue led to

more engagement in respite activities, or those specific activities resulted in more fatigue. Conversely, another study

on formal work breaks showed that activities for socialization and relaxation were negatively associated with sub-

sequent negative affect within individuals over three workdays (Trougakos et al., 2008). Those inconsistent findings

warrant additional investigations on different types of break activities over extended time period. Accordingly, we

used a daily diary method to study office workers for 10 consecutive workdays and further separated the measure-

ment occasions of the work stressor (T1: work demands mid-workday) and strain (T2: negative affect at the end of

Figure 1. Conceptual model

MICRO-BREAK ACTIVITIES 29

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38,28–44 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job