Are Psychosocial Resources Buffering the Relation Between Physical Work Behaviors and Need for Recovery?

Abstract

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Objectives: We investigate whether job control and/or social support at work play a buffering role in the relation between various physical work behaviors and Need for Recovery (NFR) among employees with physically demanding jobs.Methods: Our findings are based on data from 332 workers. The Job Content Questionnaire was used to assess job control, social support and specific physically demanding tasks. General physical work behaviors were measured by two Axivity AX3 accelerometers. The NFR Scale (0–11) was used to assess NFR. We used multiple linear regression models.Results: Sitting at work turned out to be negatively associated with NFR, whereas physically demanding tasks were associated positively with NFR. Our results show a significant buffering role for job control on the correlation between sitting, physically demanding tasks and NFR, but not for social support.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that higher job control might be beneficial to reduce high NFR and eventually may help to reduce early drop-out and sickness absence. Further research is called for to confirm the buffering role of job control and to investigate the underlying mechanisms.

Keywords

• occupational physical activity
• physically demanding jobs
• need for recovery
• social support
• job control
• accelerometers