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Work recovery reflects the replenishment of personal resources depleted by working, which has implications for employee health and wellness. However, work scheduling factors have received very limited attention in the recovery literature, despite that recovery is a dynamic process widely recognized to be influenced by contextual factors that define and influence the work role. After first conducting a narrative review of whether and how work scheduling factors are accounted for in existing theories of work recovery, we conduct a systematic review of existing work recovery research to identify any past empirical consideration of work scheduling factors in the recovery research base. We then harness the results of this systematic review to develop a taxonomy of work scheduling and related contextual factors that may be relevant to the process of recovery from work. We discuss the theoretical, practical, and methodological implications that emerged from our narrative and systematic reviews, providing guidance for how this newly developed taxonomy can be applied to understanding the implications of scheduling dynamics for work recovery across a range of different work contexts. 

Abstract BackgroundUndergraduate students consistently struggle with mastering concepts related to thermodynamics. Prior work has shown that haptic technology and intensive hands‐on workshops help improve learning outcomes relative to traditional lecture‐based thermodynamics instruction. The current study takes a more feasible approach to improving thermal understanding by incorporating simple mechanical objects into individual problem‐solving exercises. Purpose/HypothesesThis study tests the impact of simple mechanical objects on learning outcomes (specifically, problem‐solving performance and conceptual understanding) for third‐year undergraduate engineering students in a thermodynamics course across a semester. Design/MethodDuring the semester, 119 engineering students in two sections of an undergraduate thermodynamics course completed three 15‐min, self‐guided problem‐solving tasks, one section without and the other with a simple and relevant physical object. Performance on the tasks and improvements in thermodynamics comprehension (measured via Thermal and Transport Concept Inventory scores) were compared between the two sections. ResultsStudents who had a simple, relevant object available to solve three thermodynamics problems consistently outperformed their counterparts without objects, although only to statistical significance when examining the simple effects for the third problem. At the end of the semester, students who had completed the tasks with the objects displayed significantly greater improvements in thermodynamics comprehension than their peers without the relevant object. Higher mechanical aptitude facilitated the beneficial effect of object availability on comprehension improvements. ConclusionFindings suggest that the incorporation of simple mechanical objects into active learning exercises in thermodynamics curricula could facilitate student learning in thermodynamics and potentially other abstract domains. 

Abstract While many employees read and respond to work‐related e‐mails in the evenings after work, the mechanisms through which after‐hours e‐mailing influences well‐being remain poorly understood. In particular, there has been limited consideration of whether different characteristics of after‐hours e‐mails (frequency, duration, perceived tone) may trigger work‐related rumination that influences employee well‐being at bedtime (i.e., the end of the post‐work period). To address this gap in the literature, data were collected from 59 employees during a 5‐day daily survey period. We expected after‐hours e‐mail frequency, duration, and perceived tone to indirectly relate to employee vigour and fatigue at bedtime (two common well‐being criteria) via affective rumination and problem‐solving pondering (two major forms of work‐related rumination). Our results indicated that a more negatively perceived after‐hours e‐mail tone influenced both vigour and fatigue via affective rumination. Further, our findings suggested diverging implications of after‐hours e‐mailing frequency and duration for problem‐solving pondering, with longer duration and more frequent after‐hours e‐mailing co‐varying with higher and lower levels of this form of rumination, respectively. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering various characteristics of after‐hours e‐mailing and corresponding implications of work‐related rumination when studying employee well‐being.