Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (1): 97-104.

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Does overtime work necessarily cause fatigue? The mechanism of overtime hours on recovery from work

  

  • Received:2020-10-07 Revised:2021-08-22 Online:2022-01-20 Published:2022-01-20
  • Contact: Yu Yan

加班一定会带来疲倦吗?加班时长对工作恢复水平的影响机制研究

严瑜,祁航   

  1. 武汉大学
  • 通讯作者: 严瑜

Abstract: Work burnout has become a widespread and serious problem, but in real work life, overtime work and other activities are still very common. As recovery from work is a process in which individual functions return to pre-stress levels, it is essential for individuals to replenish physical and mental resources. However, previous research results about overtime’s effect on recovery were inconsistent, and most of the internal mechanism researches focused on psychological detachment, emphasizing that being engaged in overtime work will reduce the level of psychological detachment, causing individuals to continue to think about work-related issues, which ultimately hindered the process of recovery from work. Thus, the present study explored the internal mechanism of work-related activities on recovery, based on the conservation of resources theory. More importantly, we studied the mediation of control during leisure time and the moderating role of mastery experiences. This study used social media and e-mail to contact employees from all walks of life (services, administration, production, education, banking; encoded them, and investigated their overtime hours, control, mastery experience and work recovery level at a fixed time of 5 consecutive working days in a week. Before conducting a diary study, employees needed to fill out a questionnaire with basic information. Excluding false records and participants who stopped halfway through, the final sample was 167. In order to test the proposed hypothesis, SPSS 24.0 and Mplus7.4 were used for the Multilevel Structural Equation Model and Monte Carlo confidence interval estimation method. In order to better understand the mechanism recovery from work, we proposed and tested a moderated mediation model in which overtime hours affected the level of work recovery, with control as a mediator and mastery as a moderator. The results showed that: (1) overtime hours had a significant negative predictive effect on job recovery (γ=-0.35, p<0.001); (2) control during leisure time partially mediated the relationship between overtime hours and the level of work recovery (γ=-0.07, p<0.05); (3) The employee’s mastery experiences moderated the relationship between overtime hours and control during leisure time (γ=-0.47, p<0.001); (4) the Monte Carlo simulation method was used to test the moderated mediation effect, indicating that under a higher level of mastery experiences, the indirect effects of overtime hours on the level of work recovery through control during leisure time were no longer significant. This study enriched the theoretical basis of recovery literature and also provided suggestions for management practice. The mediating role of control during leisure time and the moderating role of mastery experiences challenged the past viewpoint that overtime work will inevitably bring about negative impacts. It is proposed that the acquisition of resources may be a more active and effective strategy for recovery, which helps us better understand the work recovery mechanism. In addition to the theoretical contributions, our findings indicate that caring for employees’ internal motivations, formulating overtime hours and content based on their specific needs may help mitigate or even subvert the negative impact of overtime work. Therefore, enterprises should not blindly require long hours of overtime, but should be people-oriented, and create a personalized overtime mode that will not consume too much resources.

Key words: Key words: overtime hours, recovery from work, control during leisure time, mastery experiences

摘要: 基于资源保存理论,采用日记研究法探讨了加班对工作恢复的影响以及闲暇时间控制和掌握体验在其中的作用。结果表明:(1)加班时长显著负向影响工作恢复水平;(2)加班时长通过闲暇时间控制影响工作恢复水平;(3)掌握体验不仅调节了加班时长和闲暇时间控制之间的关系,还进一步调节了加班时长通过闲暇时间控制影响工作恢复水平的间接关系,在高水平的掌握体验下,加班时长通过闲暇时间控制影响工作恢复水平的间接效应不再显著。这意味着加班未必一定抑制工作恢复,获得积极体验从而促进资源的生成可能才是恢复的关键,这为企业和个人提供了有效进行工作恢复的指导。

关键词: 关键词: 加班时长, 工作恢复, 对闲暇时间的控制, 掌握体验