Work, Stress And Health
November 27, 2007
You might think that a long vacation is the way to beat job burnout. But the
kind of vacation you have is just as important -- if not more important -- than
its length, concludes Prof. Dov Eden, an organizational psychologist from Tel
Aviv University's Faculty of Management.
The key to a quality vacation, he says, is to put work at a distance. And keep
it there.
"Using work cell phones and checking company email at the poolside is not a
vacation," Prof. Eden says. "Persons who do this are shackled to
electronic tethers which in my opinion is little different from being in
jail."
For the past ten years, Prof. Eden has been studying "respite
effects," which measure relief from chronic job stress before, during, and
after vacations away from the workplace. Electronic connectivity exacts a price
from those who stay wired into the office while away from work. It marks the end
of true "respite relief," says Prof. Eden, and is a cause of chronic
job stress.
"If I were a manager, I would insist that my employees leave their cell
phones at work during vacation and not check their email while away," Prof.
Eden warns. "In the long run, the employee will be better rested and better
able to perform his or her job because true respite affords an opportunity to
restore depleted psychological resources.
"Employees who feel compelled to be at the beck and call of work at all
times are unlikely to recover from the ill-effects of chronic job stress. This
is a causal chain that eventually gets internalized as psychological and
behavioral responses that can bring on serious chronic disease."
Recently Prof. Eden, his student Dr. Oranit Davidson, and Prof. Mina Westman
(all at Tel Aviv University) surveyed 800 professors from eight universities in
Israel, the United States, and New Zealand. The researchers measured stress and
strain before, during, and after a sabbatical leave of a semester or a whole
year. They found that those who took a long sabbatical break experienced about
the same amount of relief (and returned to pre-sabbatical levels of stress and
strain in just about the same amount of time) as people who had taken either a
week-long or long-weekend vacation.
Stress and psychological strain before, during, and after the respite were
measured using a questionnaire and those on sabbatical were compared to a
similar group of university academics who did not go on sabbatical. Participants
included professors at Berkeley, Florida State University, and The University of
Texas at Arlington, among others.
Whether a vacation was as short as a long weekend or as long as a year, within
three weeks back at work (and possibly even before that), the respite-relief
effect had virtually washed out, Prof. Eden observed.
"Among many employees we have studied over the years we have found that
those who detach from their back-home work situation benefit the most from their
respite," says Prof. Eden. "Moreover, these individuals are probably
less likely to experience job burnout. It's the ones who can't detach from the
constant flow of job demands that are most likely to burnout.
"If I could choose," concludes Prof. Eden, "my educated guess is
that I would prefer to have vacations more often, but shorter in length."
And does Prof. Eden have a cell phone? "I refuse to enslave myself to one
of those devices," he says. "I only use one on the days I visit my
grandchildren."
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Prof. Eden's most recent findings were presented at the last biannual meeting of
"Work, Stress and Health" in Miami, an event sponsored by the American
Psychological Association. Previous studies on Prof. Eden's research have been
published in top-tier journals including the Journal of Applied Psychology,
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Organizational
Behavior and Human Performance.
American Friends of Tel Aviv University supports Israel's largest and most
comprehensive center of higher learning. It is ranked among the world's top 100
universities in science, biomedical studies, and social science, and rated one
of the world's top 200 universities overall. Internationally recognized for the
scope and groundbreaking nature of its research programs, Tel Aviv University
consistently produces work with profound implications for the future.
Source: George Hunka
American Friends of Tel Aviv
University
Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/
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