Psychological Detachment & Recovery

Much of existing research on employee engagement is deficient in examining organizational actors' lived experiences of organizational engagement activities. This article, deriving from qualitative research in a public-private partnership organization, contributes to the current understanding of how employee engagement is generated through management communication activities seeking to promote engagement and employees' responses thereto. Drawing also on the literatures on organizational change, communication and culture, our research demonstrates that (1) managers use both directive and discursive means of communication to create an environment in which employees may wish to engage and (2) employees respond positively to such communication as it makes them feel valued and involved, which enhances their propensity to engage with the organization. However, contrary to widespread assumptions in the literature, the generation of employee engagement is far from straightforward; employees have an active role to participate in the engagement activities offered by managers.

Proactive behavior (self‐initiated and future‐oriented actions to bring about change) has largely positive consequences for organizationally oriented outcomes such as job performance. Yet the outcomes of proactivity from a well‐being perspective have not been clearly considered. Drawing on self‐determination theory and the stressor‐detachment model, we propose two distinct paths by which proactivity affects individuals' daily well‐being. The first path is an energy‐generating pathway in which daily proactive behavior enhances end‐of‐work‐day vitality via perceived competence. The second is a strain pathway in which daily proactive behavior generates anxiety at work, which undermines the process of detachment from work. We argue that these pathways are shaped by the extent to which supervisors are prone to blaming employees for their mistakes (punitive supervision). We tested this model using a sample of 94 employees who completed surveys three times a day for between 5 and 7 days. Our multilevel analyses provide support for the proposed dual‐pathway model and suggest differential well‐being outcomes of daily proactive work behavior. Overall, when an individual behaves proactively at work, they are more likely to experience higher levels of daily perceived competence and vitality. However, these positive effects can exist in parallel with daily negative effects on end‐of‐workday anxiety, and hence bedtime detachment, but only when the supervisor is perceived to be punitive about mistakes.

This diary study builds on the effort-recovery and broaden-and-build theories to examine whether the subjective experience of off-job activities (work-related, household, social, physical, low-effort) matters for an individual's daily recovery from work. It was hypothesized that momentary happiness experienced during off-job activities stops the prolongation of load reactions from work-related effort, and builds personal resources that benefit daily recovery from work. Using a day reconstruction method, 384 participants recruited via a Dutch website reconstructed their time spent on, and happiness during, off-job activities, and their daily recovery on workdays over a twoweek period. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed that work-related and household activities during off-job time were negatively associated with recovery at bedtime when happiness during such activities was low, but not when happiness was high. Social and physical activities were associated positively with recovery when happiness during such activities was high, but negatively when happiness was low, indicating that such activities only aid recovery when they are enjoyed. The findings expand knowledge on recovery by showing that it is not just the time spent on offwork activities but the subjective experience of such activities that plays a pivotal role in the way they are linked to recovery.

Proactive behavior (self-initiated and future-oriented actions to bring about change) has largely positive consequences for organizationally oriented outcomes such as job performance. Yet the outcomes of proactivity from a well-being perspective have not been clearly considered. Drawing on self-determination theory and the stressordetachment model, we propose two distinct paths by which proactivity affects individuals' daily well-being. The first path is an energy-generating pathway in which daily proactive behavior enhances end-of-workday vitality via perceived competence. The second is a strain pathway in which daily proactive behavior generates anxiety at work, which undermines the process of detachment from work. We argue that these pathways are shaped by the extent to which supervisors are prone to blaming employees for their mistakes (punitive supervision). We tested this model using a sample of 94 employees who completed surveys three times a day for between 5 and 7 days. Our multilevel analyses provide support for the proposed dual-pathway model and suggest differential well-being outcomes of daily proactive work behavior. Overall, when an individual behaves proactively at work, they are more likely to experience higher levels of daily perceived competence and vitality. However, these positive effects can exist in parallel with daily negative effects on end-of-workday anxiety, and hence bedtime detachment, but only when the supervisor is perceived to be punitive about mistakes.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) afford benefits in staying connected and increasing work flexibility for employees; however, they also bring us negative behavioral and psychological outcomes. This research examines the potential consequences of workplace telepressure, referring to the preoccupation with and urge to respond quickly to work-related ICT messages, on employee physical and psychological outcomes and the intervening roles of psychological detachment and boundary-crossing behaviors. A sample of 233 full-time workers from an online survey panel completed an online questionnaire. We observed bivariate relationships between workplace telepressure and health outcomes (i.e., employee burnout, poor sleep quality), psychological detachment, and boundary crossing. Bootstrapped indirect effects analyses showed that only boundary crossing provided a viable pathway by which workplace telepressure was associated with physical fatigue, poor sleep quality, and low sleep quantity. Implications of the intervening role of boundary crossing and the relationships between workplace telepressure and negative health outcomes are discussed.

Today, organizations face risky legal and financial consequences stemming from a single sexual harassment event. The purpose of this study was to verify that the sexual harassment, as perceived by female employees, significantly affects their levels of psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior to investigate the moderating role of organizational silence and psychological detachment in the causal relationship. First, this study found that perceived sexual harassment has a negative impact on the female employees’ psychological distress and workplace deviant behavior. This study’s results also demonstrated that psychological distress has a positive impact on workplace deviant behavior. Additionally, the influence of perceived sexual harassment on psychological distress increased when the employees’ psychological detachment was weak. Finally, limitations and future research directions are also discussed.

Research has shown that psychological detachment from work during nonwork time is an important recovery experience and is crucial for employee well-being. Integrating research on job-stress recovery with research on leadership and employee mental health and well-being, this study examines how a leader's psychological detachment from work during nonwork time directly relates to subordinate psychological detachment from work and indirectly to employee exhaustion and need for recovery. Based on self-report data from 137 employees and their supervisors, this study revealed that leader psychological detachment was related to subordinate psychological detachment and that leader psychological detachment was indirectly related to low subordinate exhaustion and low subordinate need for recovery, also when controlling for negative affectivity and leader-member-exchange. Overall, this study demonstrates that leaders might have an impact on subordinate strain symptoms not only via leadership behavior at work but also via detachment processes during leisure time. These findings suggest that employee recovery processes might not only be regarded as an individual phenomenon, but could be seen as embedded in the larger organizational context.