The lingering curvilinear effect of workload on employee rumination and negative emotions: A diary study

ABSTRACT

A high workload has long been considered a harmful stressor that adversely affects employees. In the current study, we propose that work underload also has negative implications for employees, and that there is a curvilinear relationship between daily workload and rumination. These negative consequences can carry over to the next day. We collected data from a sample of 137 employees over the course of 9 days to examine how deviations from employees’ average workload impacts their negative rumination at the conclusion of the workday and their negative emotions the following morning. Results of the multilevel analyses indicated that daily workload had a significant curvilinear, J-shaped association with subsequent evening negative rumination that carries over into the following day in the form of higher negative emotions. These effects were stronger for employees with high levels of trait negative affectivity. Our findings suggest that while the effect of upward deviation from the typical workload is worse for employee rumination and subsequent negative emotions than the effect of downward deviation, deviations in either direction have negative effects on employees, especially for individuals with high levels of trait negative affectivity. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of examining daily fluctuation in workload.

KEYWORDS:

• Curvilinear
• workload
• daily diary
• negative rumination
• activation theory
• negative emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We calculated the workload SD for each person and correlated it with trait NA (a between-person level correlation). The results revealed a small non-significant association (r = .11, p = .22), indicating that it is unlikely that higher variability in daily workload for those high in trait NA explains the obtained pattern of results.

2 We calculated the within-person correlation between morning negative emotions and subsequently measured workload that same day and found a significant positive correlation (r = .13, p < .01), in line with the referenced findings.

3 Nevertheless, we re-ran our model using only the female participants and the result pattern did not change, indicating it was not the male participants who are driving the results. Furthermore, gender was not significantly associated with any of the study’s variables at the between-person level.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [Grant Number T42-OH008438].