Recovery from work is an important factor in mitigating the relation between high job demands and ill-health (Geurts and Sonnentag
2006; Sonnentag et al.
2017). It refers to the process of alleviating strain symptoms caused by job demands (Sonnentag and Fritz
2015) and restoring employees’ energy and mental resources (Zijlstra and Sonnentag
2006). Aging is known to slow down the recovery process on a physiological level (Ilmarinen
1999), but the scientific evidence on the effects of aging on psychological recovery processes remains very limited. Due to the increasing number of aging people in the workforce, it is crucial to understand the challenges that older workers face and to generate strategies to support longer, healthy careers and prevent early retirement. Recovery from work can be assumed to help prolong working careers, because it is closely related to health and well-being (e.g., de Bloom et al.
2015; Fritz and Sonnentag
2006; Geurts and Sonnentag
2006). However, we do not have yet a clear understanding of psychological recovery processes among aging workers.
The target group of this study was teachers, who, according to several international studies, seem to be an especially stressed occupational group (e.g., Kinnunen et al.
1994; Kyriacou
2001; Salo
2002; Skaalvik and Skaalvik
2015). Teachers face job demands slightly different from those of other knowledge workers, although, for example, high workload is present in their daily working lives as it is in many other occupations. Typical teacher stressors mentioned in several studies include time pressure, students’ behavioral problems and low motivation, value conflicts, lack of recognition, lack of autonomy, conflicts with colleagues or parents, and the increasing use of technology in teaching (e.g., Betoret
2009; Fernet et al.
2012; Friedman
1995; Hakanen et al.
2006; Klassen and Chiu
2011; Kokkinos
2007; Skaalvik and Skaalvik
2009,
2011,
2017). Teachers also tend to spend a lot of time on work-related activities outside formal work hours (e.g., Garrick et al.
2018), which limits the time available for recovery from work. It is, therefore, important to find new ways to promote teachers’ recovery and specifically to identify experiences aiding recovery which have not received much attention in earlier research on aging employees or teachers.
The aim of this study is to contribute to recovery research in three ways. First, we focused on recovery from work among teachers, a highly loaded occupational group, whose recovery processes are under-examined. There is evidence showing that recovery is especially important when job stressors are high (Sonnentag
2018). Second, this is one of the first studies to investigate psychological recovery experiences (detachment, relaxation, control, mastery, meaning, and affiliation) suggested by the recently developed DRAMMA model (Newman et al.
2014) in the context of aging. Third, we examined whether age moderated the relationships between these recovery experiences and well-being. Thus, our study produces novel information about aging teachers’ recovery from work during off-job time.
Recovery from work
Research so far has distinguished two complementary processes underlying recovery from work (De Bloom et al.
2010; Geurts and Sonnentag
2006; Sonnentag
2001). First, the passive mechanism suggests that recovery only occurs when people stop working and rest (Meijman and Mulder
1998). Low demands and disengagement from work are assumed to enable employees’ psychobiological systems to return to baseline levels (McEwen
1998; Sonnentag and Fritz
2015). Second, the active perspective of recovery highlights the importance of engagement in pleasant or challenging leisure activities (Geurts and Sonnentag
2006). The active perspective suggests that to recover from work stress, employees need to replenish threatened or lost resources (Hofboll
1989), and engage in activities which produce positive emotions and satisfy their basic needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (Fredrickson
2001; Ryan and Deci
2000). Summing up, recovery entails resting and detaching from work, but also building new resources and engaging in meaningful leisure activities.
Recovery can be elicited by certain subjective experiences, leisure-time activities, and physiological processes occurring during sleep (Sonnentag
2018). In this study, we focus on psychological recovery experiences underlying different leisure activities. Sonnentag and Fritz (
2007) suggested a framework of four major recovery experiences: psychological detachment from work, relaxation, control, and mastery. Detachment refers to mental disengagement from work-related thoughts. Relaxation implies low levels of mental or physical activation and little physical or intellectual effort. Control refers to being able to decide on one’s leisure schedule and activities. Mastery encompasses learning opportunities and challenges, resulting in feelings of achievement and competence. Of these four experiences, detachment seems to be most consistently associated with positive changes in well-being (for reviews, see Sonnentag and Fritz
2015; Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah
2017). Several studies have also demonstrated links between relaxation, control, mastery, and better well-being (for a meta-analysis, see Bennett et al.
2018).
Based on a meta-analysis of 363 articles within psychology and leisure sciences, Newman et al. (
2014) added the experiences of meaning and affiliation to this list of recovery experiences in their DRAMMA model, which aims to explain how leisure activities relate to subjective well-being. They also replaced control with autonomy, which refers to feelings of decision latitude. Autonomy is also one of the basic psychological needs suggested in Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci
2000). Autonomy closely resembles control, but is broader by emphasizing feelings of volition in general instead of merely having control over one’s leisure schedule (Newman et al.
2014). Meaningful leisure activities are a means by which individuals gain something valuable in their lives (Iwasaki
2008). Experiencing meaning in life is beneficial for well-being on both trait level (e.g., Hicks and King
2007; King et al.
2006) and state level (e.g., King et al.
2006; Machell et al.
2015; Thrash et al.
2010). Also, at day level, active search for meaning is related to improvements in well-being (Newman et al.
2018). This means that proactively engaging in activities that add meaning to one’s life is likely to improve well-being. Affiliation refers to feelings of belongingness with other people and the fulfillment of people’s innate need for relatedness (Ryan and Deci
2000). According to Newman et al. (
2014), of all DRAMMA experiences, affiliation has the most support from multiple theoretical perspectives. In addition to fulfilling the basic psychological need for relatedness (Ryan and Deci
2000), social affiliation also fosters social support, which helps to mitigate against stressful events (Lakey and Orehek
2011). In this study, we investigated how these DRAMMA recovery experiences during leisure time (i.e., evenings after working hours) are related to three aspects of well-being: vitality, life satisfaction, and work ability.
Vitality and life satisfaction describe context-free well-being. Vitality refers to a positive feeling of aliveness and energy (Ryan and Frederick
1997). Since recovery from work allows employees to gain new internal resources such as energy and positive mood (Sonnentag and Fritz
2007), recovery experiences can be assumed to promote vitality. A meta-analysis by Bennett et al. (
2018) showed that recovery experiences are related to higher vigor, which includes vitality and positive activated affect. Life satisfaction is a subjective global judgement of one’s quality of life (Diener et al.
1985) and a central component of subjective well-being (Diener et al.
2017). Previous studies show that recovery-related experiences are associated with higher life satisfaction (e.g., Sonnentag and Fritz
2007; Strauss-Blasche et al.
2002).
Work ability can be defined as the degree to which employees are mentally and physically capable of performing their current work role and of achieving a balance between a person’s resources and work demands (Ilmarinen et al.
1997; Tuomi et al.
1991). Work ability has its roots in health status (Ilmarinen
2009). Since recovery from work mitigates the relation between work stress and ill-health, and helps to build new resources (Geurts and Sonnentag
2006; Sonnentag et al.
2017), it can be presumed to promote work ability.
In addition, we examined whether age is related to these three well-being outcomes. Earlier research has shown that age is associated with decreases in work ability (e.g., Alavinia et al.
2009; Ilmarinen et al.
1997; Kinnunen and Nätti
2018). Some studies suggest that life satisfaction tends to reach a low point in mid-life but increases again after reaching retirement age (Blanchflower and Oswald
2008; Stone et al.
2010). This means that in our sample consisting of working people aged up to 68 years, aging may be associated with lower life satisfaction. Earlier studies suggest that although aging is generally related to higher affective well-being, this mostly applies to low-arousal positive states (e.g., relaxation, peace of mind), not more energized states like vitality (Kessler and Staudinger
2009; Scheibe and Zacher
2013). Some studies also show that aging may bring a shift in preference away from high-arousal positive emotions and towards low-arousal positive emotions (e.g., Scheibe et al.
2013). It could, therefore, be assumed that aging is either not related to vitality or related to lower vitality.
Age, recovery, and emotion regulation
As stated previously, scientific evidence of the effects of age on psychological recovery processes remains limited so far. However, recovery processes are closely linked to emotion regulation (Parkinson and Totterdell
1999; Sonnentag and Fritz
2007; Sonnentag et al.
2017), and the motivation and competence for emotion regulation tend to change with age (Scheibe and Zacher
2013). Consequently, it can be assumed that aging may play a role in recovery from work.
It is important to note that the research streams of life-span development and organizational literature differ in terms of the definitions of “older” or “aging” people (Doerwald et al.
2016). In the life-span literature, age 60 or 65 is often used as a cut-off for when old age begins (Baltes and Smith
2003), whereas definitions of older workers correspond to the general operationalization of middle age, around 40–60 years (Doerwald et al.
2016). As this study is about teachers who are still working, we adhere to the definition for aging workers as it appears in the organizational literature (Doerwald et al.
2016).
The few existing studies about age and recovery have mostly focused on individuals’ own perceptions of their need for recovery, which seems to change during the life course. Two studies have shown that employees’ need for recovery after the working day increases linearly until the age of 55 and then stabilizes for the oldest workers approaching retirement age (Kiss et al.
2008; Mohren et al.
2010). Explanations for these findings can be found in three domains (Mohren et al.
2010). First, in the work environment, the process of downshifting may have been initiated, for example, in terms of a reduction in working hours. Second, differences in the family situation may account for varying levels of need for recovery: often, the oldest employees no longer have children living at home, which is likely to reduce work–family conflict and the demands of the family domain. Third, older employees may have developed better strategies for dealing with need for recovery due to their longer experience and expertise in their working careers (Silverstein
2008). Consequently, it is possible that older employees have better “recovery skills”. These skills relate to leisure crafting, which refers to the proactive pursuit of leisure activities targeted at goal setting, human connection, and personal development (Petrou and Bakker
2016).
The restoration of positive mood and energy are core functions of recovery from work, which supports the link between recovery and emotion regulation (Sonnentag and Fritz
2007). Research on emotion regulation has identified a range of strategies that individuals use to improve their mood, including both cognitive and behavioral strategies. Sonnentag and Fritz (
2007) refer to the classification by Parkinson and Totterdell (
1999), which proposes two main categories of emotion regulation: diversionary and engagement strategies. Diversionary strategies aim at avoiding a stressful situation or seeking distraction from it, whereas engagement strategies refer to confronting or accepting the stressful situation. According to Sonnentag and Fritz (
2007), diversionary strategies are more relevant for work-stress recovery, because engagement strategies keep the individual cognitively occupied with the stressful situation, which makes recovery less likely. Diversionary strategies relate closely to three recovery experiences: detachment from work, relaxation, and mastery (Sonnentag and Fritz
2007). Higher age seems to be related to an increased preference to choose distraction (a less effortful, diversionary strategy) over reappraisal (an engagement strategy) when downregulating negative emotions (Scheibe et al.
2015).
Aging entails changes in emotion regulation motivation. Older adults seem to be more motivated to regulate emotions to optimize well-being, whereas younger adults are generally more focused on the achievement of goals (e.g., goals related to work and career development) (Carstensen
2006; Labouvie-Vief
2003). These changes are assumed to be driven by changes in future time perspective and cognitive abilities. In sum, higher age is associated with a higher motivation to avoid affective states that are negative and/or high in arousal (Scheibe and Zacher
2013). This is likely to have consequences for recovery, which focuses on dealing with job stress, a highly aroused negative state. It is possible that older employees, for example, have higher motivation to engage in detachment and relaxation during off-job time to distract from job stress.
Due to their greater life experience, older adults may also be more effective in implementing emotion regulation strategies and more competent in emotion regulation (Scheibe and Zacher
2013). Prominent life-span psychology theories, such as socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen
2006) and the model of selection, optimization, and compensation (Baltes and Baltes
1990), propose that aging triggers proactive behavior and is related to prioritizing emotional goals. These proactive behaviors, especially when they relate to emotion regulation and goal setting, may also be associated with recovery from work. Due to their long work and life experience, older workers may have a clearer understanding of what helps them to recover more successfully and make the most of their leisure time.
The present study: research questions and hypotheses
In the present study, we sought answers to three research questions. First, we asked: How do recovery experiences of detachment, relaxation, control, mastery, meaning, and affiliation outside working hours relate to (a) vitality, (b) life satisfaction, and (c) work ability? Basing our examination on the DRAMMA model (Newman et al.
2014) and the existing research on recovery experiences (e.g., the meta-analysis by Bennett et al.
2018), we predict (H1) that all recovery experiences are related to higher well-being. Of the well-being outcomes, there is most evidence concerning the positive links to vitality.
Second, we asked: Is age related to vitality, life satisfaction, and work ability? We expect (H2) that age relates to lower work ability (e.g., Alavinia et al.
2009; Ilmarinen et al.
1997; Kinnunen and Nätti
2018), and likely also to lower life satisfaction (Blanchflower and Oswald
2008; Stone et al.
2010), and possibly to lower vitality (e.g., Kessler and Staudinger
2009; Scheibe and Zacher
2013), as discussed above.
Our third research question concerned the role of age in the relationship between recovery experiences and well-being outcomes. Thus, we asked: How does age moderate the relationship of recovery experiences and the outcomes described above? To the best of our knowledge, this issue has not yet been examined. Therefore, we did not formulate specific hypotheses regarding each recovery experience. In light of the existing literature about age-related changes in emotion regulation, we assume, for example, that detachment and relaxation may be more easily (i.e., with less effort) achieved by older teachers due to their greater motivation to avoid stress, which in turn is reflected in their higher levels of well-being. However, younger teachers may be in a greater need of detachment and relaxation due to their heavier family demands and, therefore, benefit more from these recovery experiences. All in all, concerning the last research question, our study can be considered explorative, although we expect (H3) to find moderator effects.