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Through our qualitative research, we explore how employees use technology to take breaks in the workplace. We first examine factors affecting the choice between online and offline breaks. We then explore triggers and consequences of online breaks. Our grounded theory approach produced a rich description of online work breaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, employee engagement has emerged as a topic of great interest to both practitioners and academics, likely due to its association with numerous positive individual and organizational outcomes. While these associations are informative, leaders require specific practices, which they may enact in order to maximize the engagement levels of their employees. Utilizing a mixed methods approach, this study investigates specific practices that may foster employee engagement. First, 32 key informant interviews were conducted across the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administrations (VHA) to understand what practices lead to a more engaged workforce. Seven categories of practices emerged, including modeling engagement, information sharing, acquiring resources, promoting psychological safety, employee recognition, building a team orientation, and taking a personal interest in employees. Second, these seven practices were quantitatively tested and validated on a sample of 183 VHA medical facilities. Using multi-source, all seven practices correlated significantly with engagement and its three subfactors (i.e. cognitive, physical, and emotional engagement), with the exception of acquiring resources and employee recognition with emotional engagement. Findings are discussed, along with practical and scientific implications, limitations, and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee engagement has recently garnered vast interest from both the academic and practitioner communities, likely due to its link with numerous positive individual and organizational outcomes. Here, we introduce a new concept, unexpected work, which occurs when more resources (e.g., time, energy) from an individual are required than the individual originally anticipated. Findings from two lab experiments suggest that unexpected work has a generally negative relationship with engagement, with a particularly strong impact on the engagement subfactor of absorption. Further, our findings suggest changes in engagement may have a delayed relationship with performance. Findings are discussed along with limitations and implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student engagement has been linked to various positive individual level outcomes, such as classroom performance and well-being. However, with external factors (e.g., technology, part-time jobs, and social demands) competing for students' attentional resources, keeping students engaged in the classroom and in their programs of study becomes a daunting task for educators. This study aims to outline a step-by-step process for identifying factors driving student engagement in an academic program. We iteratively couple this outline with a case example, where we identify a set of antecedents related to student engagement and academic performance at a large Midwestern University. To identify potential antecedents of engagement in our case example, a mixed-methods, step-by-step process was utilized. This methodology revealed three higher-order factors impacting student engagement; namely, professor influence, learning environment, and student interaction. Results are presented and discussed, as well as limitations and implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through our grounded theory qualitative research, we explore how employees use technology to take breaks in the workplace. To better understand the phenomenon, we first examine why employees take online breaks as opposed to traditional offline breaks. We then explore triggers and consequences of online breaks. We identify two types of online break activities: respite, associated with pleasure-seeking, and chore, associated with non-work-related duties and responsibilities. Our findings suggest that these two types are associated with different categories of triggers (individual factors such as need for recovery and work-life balance, and job-related factors such as affective events, task and skill variety, and workload), and consequences (momentary recovery, learning, and satisfaction). Our participants suggest that although respite activities are more likely to bring relief from work demands, to help them be more productive, these breaks should be taken in a self- disciplined manner. To synthesize our findings, we present a process model of online work breaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]