Unplug and unwind

Researchers find that detaching from work quickly and consistently leads to more productive workers.

In the sports world, it’s widely accepted that recovery plays a key role in helping athletes perform at their best. Newly published research from Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business indicates that white collar workers’ performance is enhanced by recovery, as well.

The recovery methods may differ — icing and foam rolling for athletes versus relaxing and detaching for office workers, for example — but they all lead to better future performance.

The sooner we relax and detach from work once we clock out, the better off we’ll be, said Kristen Shockley, Amerson Endowed Professor of Management, who conducted the research with colleagues from the University of Georgia.  They recently published their findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

“In our study, we were interested in specific patterns of recovery that people engaged in across an evening. We found that engaging in recovery methods early and often is the best,” said Shockley. “People who begin their recovery as soon as they get home performed better at work the next day than those who started their recovery later in the evening.”

Shockley and her co-authors Ryan Grant, Fadel Matta and Malissa Clark surveyed more than 300 white-collar employees about their evening recovery experiences and next-day energy and work goal achievement levels over the course of up to two weeks. The participants were predominantly college-educated professionals who worked in office-type jobs across a variety of fields.

Participants recorded their recovery experiences every hour, which in addition to detachment and relaxation activities included feeling in control of their time and engaging in experiences where they master something—such as hobbies like practicing a musical instrument.

The researchers noted that some people delayed their recovery but eventually were able to detach and relax as the evening wore on. However, Shockley said, their analysis indicated that those people didn’t report feeling as rested or productive the next day at work as the group that detached immediately when they arrived home.

Other people, she noted, would relax for an hour, then shift their focus back to their work before returning to a relaxed state.

“That’s not the ideal way,” she said, noting that those individuals also reported being less productive and more fatigued at work the following day. “The best thing is to block your nonwork time and consider it your time to detach from work.”

In all, the researchers found that only half of the participants were able to achieve optimal recovery patterns.

Shockley and her colleagues also were interested in seeing whether certain experiences at work during the day predicted the patterns of recovery people followed that evening.

“Those people who reported learning a new task at work that day—experiencing mastery in their work role—were able to recover sooner,” said Shockley, noting this could, in turn, lead to better performance at work the following day.

The biggest obstacle to recovery is people’s inability to fully detach from work, particularly because they can’t put down their phone.

“We leave work but many of us have this ‘always-on mindset,’ so we still check our work emails or Slack messages after hours,” she said. “To the extent that people can, based on their unique job and organizational expectations, they should think about how to instead draw boundaries and focus on recovery.”

For those who compulsively check email or other work-related apps on their phone, Shockley suggests buying an app-blocking physical device like Brick, which  temporarily removes distracting apps and notifications from the smart phone.

“This could physically force you to detach if you don’t have the willpower to do it on your own” she said.

A lesson for businesses

The big takeaway of this research for businesses is that the “always-on culture” is counterproductive because the law of diminishing returns will kick in and employees’ productivity will suffer.

“Businesses should allow and actually want employees to draw boundaries because they need the recovery time to be able to come back to work the next day and be focused and energetic,” she said.

“The next time you have a grueling day at work, remember to prioritize your own rest and recovery and don’t wait until late into the evening to take care of yourself,” said lead author Ryan Grant, who conducted the study as a doctoral student at Georgia and who is now a faculty member at University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

The researchers reported their findings in the paper, “What’s your 5 to 9? Antecedents and outcomes of profiles of trajectories of daily recovery experiences across the evening,” which is published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.  

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Read the full research paper published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.