Personality dynamics turn positive and negative mood into creativity.

INTRODUCTION: Research on the link between affect and creativity rests on the assumption that creativity unfolds as a stimulus-driven response to affective states. We challenge this assumption and examine whether personality dynamics moderate the relationships between positive and negative mood with creativity. THEORETICAL MODEL: According to our model, personality dynamics that generate and maintain positive affect and downregulate negative affect energize creativity. Based on this model, we expect high creativity in response to negative mood if people engage in self-motivation and achieve a reduction in negative mood. We further derive that individual differences in action versus state orientation moderate the within-person relationship between mood and creativity. METHOD: We conducted an experience-sampling study and examined the relationship between mood and creativity in everyday work-life. Two hundred and ten participants indicated their action-state orientation and reported their mood three times a day over five consecutive workdays. At noon of each day, we assessed self-motivation and in the evening the extent to which participants had generated novel and useful ideas during the day. RESULTS: We observed high creativity when negative mood declined and self-motivation was high. Action-state orientation moderated the within-person relationships of positive and negative mood with creativity. CONCLUSION: Personality dynamics determine whether positive and negative mood result in creativity.

Being robbed of an hour of sleep: The impact of the transition to Daylight Saving Time on work engagement depends on employees' chronotype.

OBJECTIVE: Worldwide, over 70 countries advance their clocks in spring to Daylight Saving Time. Previous research has already demonstrated that the clock change negatively impacts employees at work. However, this research implicitly assumed that the clock change affects everyone to the same extent. In the current study, we propose that the massively prevalent Daylight Saving Time transition may have an effect on employees' sleep and their work engagement that is dependent upon employees' chronotype. METHODS: We conducted a longitudinal study with 155 full-time employees who filled out online surveys on three Mondays around the transition to Daylight Saving Time. RESULTS: Results showed that the transition to Daylight Saving Time resulted in decreased work engagement measured 1day as well as 1week after the transition to Daylight Saving Time. Lower sleep quality (but not shorter sleep duration) partly explained this effect. The negative effect of the transition to Daylight Saving Time on work engagement 1day after the transition was more pronounced for employees with later chronotypes ("owls") than for those with earlier chronotypes ("larks"). CONCLUSION: In summary, our study shows that the transition to Daylight Saving Time has an adverse short-time impact on private life and working life and should, therefore, also be considered in organizations. Because later chronotypes are especially prone to adverse effects of the transition, interventions targeted for this group might be especially helpful.

Intrinsic motivation as a double-edged sword: Investigating effects on well-being and the role of flex place practices as moderator to buffer adverse effects.

Ensuring employee well-being is a crucial task for organizations. While previous research has mainly focused on positive effects of intrinsic motivation, in this study, we took a more comprehensive view on intrinsic motivation and work-related well-being. More specifically, building on conservation of resources theory, we focused on two facets of work-related well-being (job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion) and examined direct (beneficial) and indirect (adverse) effects on well-being via detachment as an inconsistent mediation model. Furthermore, we took a closer look at how the use of flex place practices (FPPs), giving employees the opportunity to choose from where to work, can attenuate potential adverse effects of high intrinsic motivation. We collected data from 408 employees of a European manufacturer at two points of measurement, the first one before and the second one after the introduction of FPPs. Results showed that intrinsic motivation had a positive direct effect on changes in well-being, and an adverse indirect effect on changes in well-being via reduced detachment. For employees using FPPs, this adverse indirect effect was dissolved. This research is among the first to explore potential downsides of intrinsic motivation and the role of FPPs in the functioning of intrinsic motivation.

Unlimited Paid Time Off Policies: Unlocking the Best and Unleashing the Beast.

Unlimited paid time off policies are currently fashionable and widely discussed by HR professionals around the globe. While on the one hand, paid time off is considered a key benefit by employees and unlimited paid time off policies (UPTO) are seen as a major perk which may help in recruiting and retaining talented employees, on the other hand, early adopters reported that employees took less time off than previously, presumably leading to higher burnout rates. In this conceptual review, we discuss the theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the potential effects of UPTO on leave utilization, well-being and performance outcomes. We start out by defining UPTO and placing it in a historical and international perspective. Next, we discuss the key role of leave utilization in translating UPTO into concrete actions. The core of our article constitutes the description of the effects of UPTO and the two pathways through which these effects are assumed to unfold: autonomy need satisfaction and detrimental social processes. We moreover discuss the boundary conditions which facilitate or inhibit the successful utilization of UPTO on individual, team, and organizational level. In reviewing the literature from different fields and integrating existing theories, we arrive at a conceptual model and five propositions, which can guide future research on UPTO. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and societal implications of UPTO.

Being an accountant, cook, entertainer and teacher-all at the same time: Changes in employees' work and work-related well-being during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In March 2020, the world was hit by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic which led to all-embracing measures to contain its spread. Most employees were forced to work from home and take care of their children because schools and daycares were closed. We present data from a research project in a large multinational organisation in the Netherlands with monthly quantitative measurements from January to May 2020 (N = 253-516), enriched with qualitative data from participants' comments before and after telework had started. Growth curve modelling showed major changes in employees' work-related well-being reflected in decreasing work engagement and increasing job satisfaction. For work-non-work balance, workload and autonomy, cubic trends over time were found, reflecting initial declines during crisis onset (March/April) and recovery in May. Participants' additional remarks exemplify that employees struggled with fulfilling different roles simultaneously, developing new routines and managing boundaries between life domains. Moderation analyses demonstrated that demographic variables shaped time trends. The diverging trends in well-being indicators raise intriguing questions and show that close monitoring and fine-grained analyses are needed to arrive at a better understanding of the impact of the crisis across time and among different groups of employees.

Fueling Work Engagement: The Role of Sleep, Health, and Overtime.

With the current study, we investigate mechanisms linking sleep quality with work engagement. Work engagement is an affective-motivational state of feeling vigorous, absorbed, and dedicated while working. Drawing from both the effort-recovery model and the job demands-resources framework, we hypothesize that sleep quality should be positively related to work engagement via the replenishment of personal resources that become apparent in mental health and physical health. Because personal resources should gain salience especially in the face of job demands, we hypothesize that overtime as an indicator for job demands should strengthen the positive relationship between mental health and work engagement. We gathered data from 152 employees from diverse industries via an online survey. Results showed that sleep quality was positively related to work engagement (r = 0.20, p < 0.05), and that mental health mediated this relationship (indirect effect: ß = 0.23, lower limit confidence interval = 0.13, upper limit confidence interval = 0.34). However, physical health did not serve as a mediator. Overtime turned out to be significantly and positively related to work engagement (r = 0.22, p < 0.01), replicating previous findings, but did not significantly interact with mental health or physical health in predicting work engagement. Overall, the study highlights the significance of sleep quality for employees' mental health and work engagement.

How Did You Sleep Tonight? The Relevance of Sleep Quality and Sleep-Wake Rhythm for Procrastination at Work.

Recent studies have highlighted the relevance of sleep for procrastination at work. Procrastination at work is defined as the irrational delay of the initiation or completion of work-related activities. In line with recent studies, we offer a self-regulation perspective on procrastination. We argue that procrastination is an outcome of depleted self-regulatory resources and that the restoration of self-regulatory resources during high-quality sleep at night would prevent procrastination. Aims: In an attempt to further develop this line of research, the current study aimed to achieve a broader understanding of the relevance of sleep and circadian rhythm for procrastination. Therefore, we explored the effect of sleep quality on procrastination for different chronotypes. We also considered the shift to daylight saving time as a phenomenon that aggravates circadian misalignment and thereby later chronotypes' dependence on high-quality sleep. Specifically, we hypothesized that compared to employees with an earlier chronotype (morning types), employees with a later chronotype (evening types) are more dependent on good sleep at night to prevent procrastination the next day. This effect would be especially pronounced after the shift to daylight saving time. Methods: For this repeated-measures study, participants were 101 full-time employees. They completed a general questionnaire and day-specific questionnaires on the Monday before and the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. Results: The multilevel analyses showed that employees procrastinated less on days following nights during which they slept better and that later chronotypes experienced more procrastination than earlier chronotypes. Our findings also supported the hypothesis that the relationship between sleep quality and procrastination is stronger for later chronotypes compared to earlier chronotypes on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. In other words, the lower the sleep quality of later chronotypes during the previous night, the more they procrastinated on the Monday following the shift to daylight saving time. Discussion: Our findings further corroborate the existing findings on the relevance of sleep and chronotype for well-being and performance at work.

Interoceptive accuracy is related to long-term stress via self-regulation.

Interoception describes the ability to perceive internal bodily signals. Previous research found a relationship between interoceptive accuracy (IAcc) and cardiovascular outcomes during or after acute stress. So far, the association between IAcc and long-term stress has not been investigated, although this would be important to identify a starting point to prevent long-term stress. To address this idea in the current study, we examined the relationship between IAcc and long-term stress, which was assessed with different questionnaires and biological markers, including cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Furthermore, we investigated self-regulation as a mechanism linking IAcc to long-term stress. The sample consisted of 98 participants. To measure IAcc, participants completed the heartbeat perception task. Perceived long-term stress and self-regulation were assessed via an online questionnaire. Moreover, hair samples were taken from 65 participants to determine long-term stress with cortisol and DHEA as well as the ratio of both. Results showed that IAcc was positively related to DHEA and weakly negatively related to the other indicators of long-term stress, except for the nonsignificant relationships to the indicators cortisol and stress experiences due to negative events. Furthermore, these relationships were mediated by participants' enhanced self-regulation. Thus, our results suggest that enhanced self-regulation could be a mechanism explaining why IAcc is associated with long-term stress.

Why Don't You Go to Bed on Time? A Daily Diary Study on the Relationships between Chronotype, Self-Control Resources and the Phenomenon of Bedtime Procrastination.

Background: This daily diary study investigates the phenomenon of bedtime procrastination. Bedtime procrastination is defined as going to bed later than intended, without having external reasons for doing so. We highlight the role chronotype (interindividual differences in biological preferences for sleep-wake-times) plays for bedtime procrastination. Moreover, we challenge the view that bedtime procrastination is the result of a lack of self-regulatory resources by investigating momentary self-regulatory resources as a predictor of day-specific bedtime procrastination. Methods: One-hundred and eight employees working in various industries completed a general electronic questionnaire (to assess chronotype and trait self-control) and two daily electronic questionnaires (to assess momentary self-regulatory resources before going to bed and day-specific bedtime procrastination) over the course of five work days, resulting in 399 pairs of matched day-next-day measurements. Results: Results of multilevel regression analyses showed that later chronotypes (also referred to as evening types or 'owls') tended to report more bedtime procrastination on work days. Moreover, for late chronotypes, day-specific bedtime procrastination declined over the course of the work week. This pattern is in line with expectations derived from chronobiology and could not be explained by trait self-control. In addition, on evenings on which employees had less self-regulatory resources available before going to bed-compared to evenings on which they had more self-regulatory resources available before going to bed-employees showed lower bedtime procrastination. This finding contradicts the prevailing idea that bedtime procrastination is the result of a lack of self-regulatory resources. Conclusion: The findings of this study provide important implications for how bedtime procrastination should be positioned in the field of procrastination as self-regulatory failure and for how bedtime procrastination should be dealt with in practice.

Coming back to work in the morning: Psychological detachment and reattachment as predictors of work engagement.

Research has shown that recovery processes in general and psychological detachment in particular are important for work engagement. We argue that work engagement additionally benefits from reattachment to work in the morning (i.e., mentally reconnecting to work before actually starting to work) and that the gains derived from psychological detachment and reattachment are stronger in the morning than in the afternoon. We tested our hypotheses in a daily diary study with a sample of 167 employees who completed 2 surveys per day over the period of 2 workweeks. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that work engagement was higher in the morning than in the afternoon. Evening psychological detachment and morning reattachment positively predicted work engagement throughout the day. The association between reattachment and work engagement was stronger in the morning than in the afternoon. This study demonstrates that not only psychological detachment from work during leisure time, but also reattachment to work when coming back to work are crucial for daily engagement at work. (PsycINFO Database Record

The affective shift model of work engagement.

On the basis of self-regulation theories, the authors develop an affective shift model of work engagement according to which work engagement emerges from the dynamic interplay of positive and negative affect. The affective shift model posits that negative affect is positively related to work engagement if negative affect is followed by positive affect. The authors applied experience sampling methodology to test the model. Data on affective events, mood, and work engagement was collected twice a day over 9 working days among 55 software developers. In support of the affective shift model, negative mood and negative events experienced in the morning of a working day were positively related to work engagement in the afternoon if positive mood in the time interval between morning and afternoon was high. Individual differences in positive affectivity moderated within-person relationships. The authors discuss how work engagement can be fostered through affect regulation.