Take a break! Benefits of sleep and short breaks for daily work engagement

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: KUHNEL, Jana, ZACHER, Hannes, DE BLOOM, Jessica, Ronald BLEDOW
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/5134
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/6133/viewcontent/TakeABreak_EJWOP_afv.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary: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.