What makes a good work break? Off-job and on-job recovery as predictors ofemployee health

摘要

Recovery from work today seems to be crucial for health care employees’ health, so it isimportant to uncover ways how to facilitate and improve adequate recovery from work.Focusing on the recovery concept of detachment from work, this study investigatedassociations between detachment after work and during work breaks and individual healthamong health care employees from a general hospital in the Netherlands. An onlinecross-sectional survey study was conducted comprising a sample of 368 health careemployees of different departments. Controlling for demographics in hierarchicalregression analyses, results showed that when health care employees experienced morecognitive detachment after work, they reported less concentration problems. Second, whenemployees experienced more emotional detachment after work, they reported less feelings ofemotional exhaustion, less depressive feelings, and less sleep problems. Finally, in caseemployees experienced more physical detachment after work, they reported lessconcentration problems, less feelings of emotional exhaustion, less sleep problems andless physical health problems. No significant associations were found for detachmentduring work breaks. In conclusion, findings add to current recovery research showing thatdetachment after work is an important predictor for health care employees’ health.