Work Hard - Play Hard. Recovery from Work Stress among Knowledge Workers in Talent Factories.

Sammanfattning: Nobody can work without recovery. Stress at work, 'the wear and tear on mind and body', can have significant negative impact on physical and mental health as well as productivity. Therefore recovery is required to oppose it. The effects of insufficient recovery are well established. However, the mechanism of how effective recovery is achieved by individuals is sparsely researched. Building an attractive, recovery-friendly work environment is a key challenge modern organizations face; professional service firms and talent factories in specific. Their organizational success relies primarily on human resources and they exhibit exceptionally high work stressors. Effective recovery from work stress is paramount to sustain performance in these organizations. The research presented here focuses on recovery in that particular context. An exploratory study was conducted to understand how knowledge workers execute and perceive recovery methods. We built and applied a theoretical framework based on literature about recovery (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007; Meijman & Mulder, 1998; Hobfoll, 2002) as well as on talent factories (Werr & Schilling, 2011) and conducted 15 qualitative interviews across 4 organizations. The findings indicate a possible classification of recovery experiences in two categories: enablers, which are fundamentally required, and drivers, which improve recovery. In a contextual analysis certain recovery behavior among employees of talent factories was discovered; they favor psychological detachment from work and pursuit of challenging activities during leisure time among the recovery experiences. This thesis advances the research on recovery from work and on talent factories.