A rigorous test of a model of employees' resource recovery mechanisms during a weekend

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2086
• Date: 01 August 2016
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• Author: Jennifer M. Ragsdale,Terry A. Beehr

A rigorous test of a model of employees’resource

recovery mechanisms during a weekend

JENNIFER M. RAGSDALE

1

*AND TERRY A. BEEHR

2

1

Psychology Department, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A.

2

Psychology Department, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Michigan, U.S.A.

Summary Employees’recovery from the effects of occupational stress can be affected by their actions during time away

from work. Conservation of resources theory argues that a key to an effective stress recovery process is the

replenishment of resources during off-work time (a weekend in the present study). We test a model of the

stress recovery process during a weekend whereby two recovery mechanisms (weekend activities and

recovery experiences) improve two personal resources (self-regulatory capacity and state optimism),

subsequently affecting psychological outcomes (work engagement and burnout) at the start of the next

workweek. Employees (n= 233) from various jobs responded to online surveys before and after a weekend.

Controlling for pre-weekend resource levels and psychological outcomes assessed on Friday, the two

weekend stress recovery mechanisms (weekend activities and recovery experiences) contributed to improving

or maintainingself-regulatoryand optimism resources on Monday.Of note, psychologicaldetachment may result

in less rather than more of the resource of state optimism on Monday. Monday resource levels were linked to

improved work engagement and burnout. As proposed by conservation of resources theory, employees can

benefit from participating in activities that replenish resources necessary to meet work demands uponreturning

to work after a weekend.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: weekend recovery; recovery experiences; personal resources; work engagement; burnout

It is widely documented over the years that occupational stressors in the work environment can adversely affect

employees’physical or psychological health (with these adverse reactions labeled strain; e.g., reviews by Cooper

& Dewe, 2004; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992; Semmer, McGrath, & Beehr, 2005). As applied to the recovery process,

resource theories of occupational stress argue that stressful work experiences reduce an employee’s resources,

and stress recovery entails replenishing them (e.g., conservation of resources theory and the effort–recovery model

(ERM); Hobfoll, 1989, and Meijman & Mulder, 1998, respectively). Stress recovery is thus a dynamic process of

replenishing resources that had been expended during stressful work experiences and returning psycho-biological

systems to pre-stressor levels (Xanthopoulou, Sanz-Vergel, & Demerouti, 2014; Zijlstra, Cropley, & Rydstedt,

2014), thereby ameliorating the detrimental effect of job stressors on employee health and well-being (Geurts &

Sonnentag, 2006).

Two mechanisms of the recovery process include the more objective recovery activities or behaviors that people

do and the more subjective recovery experiences that people feel; the assumption is that doing activities results in

employees feeling the experiences. There is a growing body of research supporting the beneficial outcomes

associated with these two recovery mechanisms (see Sonnentag, Niessen, & Neff, 2012 for review), but research

is lacking that links these recovery mechanisms to the actual resources that they are theorized to replenish.

Directly testing recovery theories by measuring actual resources over time will help determine which resources

are actually replenished (or not) by the recovery process and if this process affects all resources the same way.

*Correspondence to: Jennifer M. Ragsdale, Lorton Hall, Psychology Department, The University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Drive, Tulsa, OK

74104, U.S.A. E-mail: jen-ragsdale@utulsa.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 12 March 2015

Revised 15 December 2015, Accepted 18 December 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 911–932 (2016)

Published online 26 January 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2086

Research Article

The issue is important because employees who experience strain from their work could direct their weekend

activities in ways that will help to replenish their resources, thereby reducing strains.

The purpose of the present study is to discover how employees can best direct their weekend activities to achieve

recovery. We empirically test a model of improvements in employees’resources (resource levels on Monday,

controlling for Friday baseline) predicted by the two recovery mechanisms (activities and experiences) during the

time period of a weekend. The present study contributes to the literature on occupational stress recovery by

measuring actual resource improvement as part of the recovery process and testing a rigorous model of that

resource replenishment during a weekend. The model is rigorous because it explains the relationships between

all parts of the recovery process from previous research and theory: off-work activities, recovery experiences,

resources that are replenished, and the employees’outcomes (Figure 1).

Recovery process as resource replenishment

At the end of a work period, employees may feel fatigue or other forms of strain, which can subsequently be reduced

by “recharging their batteries”during nonwork time (e.g., Sonnentag et al., 2012; Zijlstra & Sonnentag, 2006).

Recent reviews conceptualize the recovery process as involving replenishing resources diminished by work stressors

(e.g., Xanthopoulou et al., 2014). Resource replenishment is a key issue in recovery, because the person’s resources

can help them start out fresh at the beginning of the next work period, with their normal amounts of physical and

mental energy available to manage work demands. Two theories commonly used to explain this recovery process

are the ERM (Meijman & Mulder, 1998) and conservation of resources theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1989).

According to Zijlstra et al. (2014), ERM suggests that work requires self-regulatory resources that help

employees’direct effort and energy toward job demands. This same effort expenditure leads to energy depletion,

which requires rest and recovery during off-work time in order for employees to be ready to engage in self-regulation

again during the next work period (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). When recovery is incomplete, however, stressors

experienced during subsequent work periods require compensatory regulation, and thus further deplete energy

resources, resulting in psychological strains (e.g., burnout, depression, or somatic illness; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992).

Similarly, in COR theory, resources help employees deal with stressors (work-related demands), and employees

are motivated to protect and replenish them (Hobfoll, 1989). According to Xanthopoulou et al. (2014), recovery

provides opportunities during nonwork time (evenings after work, weekends, and work breaks) to replenish these

stress-resistant resources. Together, COR theory and ERM point to the recovery process as being a dynamic process

of resource replenishment.

Figure 1. Variables included in the current study

912 J. M. RAGSDALE AND T. A. BEEHR

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 911–932 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job