Mind your own break! The interactive effect of workday respite activities and mindfulness on employee outcomes via affective linkages

Workday respite activities are supposed to be beneficial for employees due to their intended relaxing and enjoyable nature, but employees may find it difficult to agilely switch their awareness and attention between work tasks and respite activities during work hours. Based on affective events and mindfulness-to-meaning theories, we propose workday respite activities as affective events and identify mindfulness—the exercise of non-judgmental awareness and attention to the present moment—as a moderator that facilitates psychological detachment from work during workday respite activities, which in turn enhances employee outcomes later in the day via affective states. Our results from three experience-sampling studies with full-time employees indicate that engaging in workday respite activities is indirectly and positively related with intrinsic motivation and work engagement via psychological detachment and positive affective state, while negatively related with work stress and emotional exhaustion via psychological detachment and negative affective state, especially when mindfulness is higher.