TY - JOUR

T1 - Maladaptive working time strategies and exhaustion: A daily diary study on work break violation, working faster, and working longer

AU - Venz, Laura

AU - Wöhrmann, Anne Marit

PY - 2025/6/6

Y1 - 2025/6/6

N2 - To maintain employees’ health, it is important to prevent work-related exhaustion ingeneral but also on a day-to-day basis. With a quantitative ten-day diary study, weinvestigated three different working time strategies as underlying mechanisms of theeffects of day-specific work overload and work scheduling autonomy on end-of-workexhaustion. The sample comprised 578 daily measurements from 93 employees inGermany. Daily work overload was positively related to daily break violations,working faster and unplanned overtime. Daily work scheduling autonomy wasnegatively related to overtime (vs. finishing work on time/early). Work overload (andtelework, which we used as control variable) and work scheduling autonomy weresignificantly and indirectly related to higher and lower, respectively, end-of-workexhaustion via unplanned overtime. To prevent employee exhaustion, it is importantto promote good work design in everyday working life so that employees do not needto extend their working days.

AB - To maintain employees’ health, it is important to prevent work-related exhaustion ingeneral but also on a day-to-day basis. With a quantitative ten-day diary study, weinvestigated three different working time strategies as underlying mechanisms of theeffects of day-specific work overload and work scheduling autonomy on end-of-workexhaustion. The sample comprised 578 daily measurements from 93 employees inGermany. Daily work overload was positively related to daily break violations,working faster and unplanned overtime. Daily work scheduling autonomy wasnegatively related to overtime (vs. finishing work on time/early). Work overload (andtelework, which we used as control variable) and work scheduling autonomy weresignificantly and indirectly related to higher and lower, respectively, end-of-workexhaustion via unplanned overtime. To prevent employee exhaustion, it is importantto promote good work design in everyday working life so that employees do not needto extend their working days.

UR - https://www.sozialpolitik.ch/article/view/7043

U2 - 10.18753/2297-8224-7043

DO - 10.18753/2297-8224-7043

M3 - Zeitschriftenaufsätze

VL - 2025

SP - 1

EP - 27

JO - Sozialpolitik.ch

JF - Sozialpolitik.ch

SN - 2297-8224

IS - 1

M1 - 1.2

ER -