Effects of vacation from work on health and well-being: Lots of fun, quickly gone

Abstract

Although vacation from work provides a valuable opportunity for recovery, few studies have met the requirements for assessing its effects. These include taking measurements well ahead of the vacation, during the vacation and at several points in time afterwards. Our study on vacation (after-) effects focused on two related questions: (1) Do health and well-being of working individuals improve during a vacation? and (2) How long does a vacation effect last after resumption of work? In a longitudinal study covering seven weeks, 96 Dutch workers reported their health and well-being levels two weeks before a winter sports vacation, during vacation and one week, two weeks and four weeks after vacation on seven indicators. Participants' health and well-being improved during vacation on five indicators: health status, mood, tension, energy level and satisfaction. However, during the first week of work resumption, health and well-being had generally returned to pre-vacation levels. In conclusion, a winter sports vacation is associated with improvements in self-reported health and well-being among working individuals. However, these effects fade out rapidly after work resumption. We propose a framework for future vacation research and suggest investigating the role of vacation type, duration and means to prolong vacation relief.

Keywords:

• work-related stress
• holiday
• vacation
• health
• well-being
• recovery
• work

Acknowledgements

We thank Lineke Berendsen for her help in collecting the data for this study and Pieter van Groenestijn for helping digitalizing the diaries and the preparation of the data set. Our special thanks also go to the two reviewers for their valuable, competent comments to improve our manuscript.