Kelly, C. M., Strauss, K., Arnold, J., and Stride, C. (2020). The relationship between leisure activities and psychological resources that support a sustainable career: The role of leisure seriousness and work-leisure similarity. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 117, Article 103340.
Dedicating time and energy to a leisure activity dissimilar from one’s job increases the traits needed for career sustainability. A sustainable career is one where employees, “remain healthy, productive, happy, and employable,” in a way that fits into an individual’s broader life context (Kelly et al., 2020). The authors investigated how engagement in a leisure activity impacts attributes like resilience and self-efficacy, specifically, if those attributes are generated or depleted.
280 adults in England were recruited at sporting/leisure venues and through internet advertisements. An online questionnaire was sent out to all participants once a month for seven months. The average, monthly response rate was about 50%. The questionnaire assessed both seriousness and similarity of the leisure activity and amount of time spent on the leisure activity. “Seriousness” was defined as “the extent to which individuals identify with, and persevere in, their activity,” and “similarity” as “the extent to which work and leisure involve similar demands and skills.” The authors additionally measured resilience and self-efficacy. It was hypothesized that the more time spent on the leisure activity, the more an individual’s resilience and self-efficacy would increase—two traits needed to sustain work engagement.
The results show that engaging in a leisure activity that is either high in seriousness and dissimilar to work or low in seriousness and similar to work is positively associated with work-related self-efficacy. When these conditions are met, the more time that was spent on the activity, the more positive the association. If an activity is both high in seriousness and similarity, time spent has a negative association with self-efficacy scores. While the study also assessed resilience, no association was shown between leisure and resilience perhaps because the length of follow-up time of the study was not sufficient to capture development of resilience.
The studies prove that creating space to engage in leisure not only improves individual prospects for career sustainability, but the likelihood of an increase in better organizational outcomes as well.