Article: The weekend matters: Relationships between stress recovery and affective experiences (pgs 1137-1162)

Authors: Charlotte Fritz, Sabine Sonnentag, Paul E. Spector, Jennifer A. McInroe Date of article:16 November 2010

"The weekend matters: Relationships between stress recovery and affective experiences" examines in detail the refreshing impact of weekend on the employees who are stressed out by the office work. In this article, it can be said that author has been able to successfully analyze that how weekend is able to provide stress relief to the tired employees. Basically there are four main Recovery factors which help us to divert our attention from regular work, like mastery is defined as an activity that pose a challenge and provide the opportunity to learn something new. Psychological detachment means a sense of a person that he is away from regular work. . Everybody has its own way of relaxation. Most of the individuals would like to relax during the weekends. Having control during the weekend means that individual may have a sense of control or autonomy. Sometimes it may happen that an individual is taking relief from its work stress during the weekend but maybe weekend has its own stressors such as family conflicts, personal problems etc called work hassles. The articles says that the weekend provides the recovery from the work stressors resulting in higher positive and lower negative affective states. Affect refers to the experience of feeling or emotion The author has defined discrete negative affective states (hostility, fear as high & sadness, fatigue as low activation affective states) and three positive affective states (joviality as high activation, self-assurance, and serenity as low activation affective states).

This is an excellent article which has contributed a lot to the field of Organizational behavior .Recovery from work stress is topic on which much research or study has not been conducted. We do not even know that how much we suffer from daily work stress intentionally or unintentionally. It is true that a little amount of stress is necessary to keep us triggered .This is an article which has excellently analyzed the relationship between stress recovery and affective work experiences. By analyzing this article we came to know that stress can have a very damaging impact on an individual's health. Common ill health effects of stress are headache, poor concentration, high blood pressure and shortness of breath. Actually weekend is the time period when we take a break from work. All humans need a break from work we all have a limited stamina after which we are unable to concentrate or are unable to perform with our full potential. To recover from the stressors of work one should have the self-regulation i.e.; it is the selfs capacity for altering its behaviors. It greatly increases the flexibility and adaptability of human behavior, enabling people to adjust their actions to a remarkably broad range of social and situational demands .Once the self regulation is restored by eliminating the stressor of work, there is an increase in the positive affective states and reduction in the negative affective states. The affective states are dependent on the events or situations, as the recovery experiences mastery , control , relaxation and work detachment boosts the positive affective states ,where as lower levels in the these factors will bring increase in the negative affective states i-e ; sadness , fatigue etc. Only taking off from work does not contribute to the mind relaxation but it is also necessary to stay away from negative emotional experiences. Once an individual has relaxed over the weekend positive affective states will increase after the weekend. According to this article the negative feature associated with relaxation is that relaxation sometimes causes laziness and dullness. Mastery will also give a sense of confidence to the employee. Because he has a feeling that he has learned something new over the weekend. So in the start of the next week he'll definitely perform his work with great zeal and zest. If mastery is relevant to the field of job, then it would enhance the positive affective states, job satisfaction, higher performance, increase motivational levels.

People having high sense of authority and control during the off time from work will tend to be happier. These people are more likely to plan their task and solve the problems accordingly. If a person experiences a control or autonomy during the weekend than definitely he'll be confident that he can organize and plan the things in a good manner. Psychological detachment also plays a very important role in stress relieving. Once we have a feeling that we have to stay away from a work for few days it can give us a very soothing feeling. During this detachment period we do not have to worry about our work completion or activities. Complete break from work can refresh our mind. When an individual has to face non work problems than obviously there will be no stress relieve over the weekend. Non work issues are associated with higher levels of negative affective states after the weekend. Negative affective states are more in the beginning of the week mainly because of the burdensome and anxiety due to the work pressure Work place interactions are will probably be more positive from midmorning onward and also later in the week. The limitations of the article are, it does not provide the in depth analysis of working environment, job specifications. Because this sample consists of preschool teachers only, it does not keep in view the other professions in which working conditions, timing are harsher. The other problem is the sample consists of majority of females and the strain level is double in females as compare to males. The study should be conducted in the form of interviews or focused group, because return of 50% of the questionnaire implies that there is a problem in the data collection technique that should be redesigned to provide comfort to participants.

This article has urged OB researchers to develop different techniques and methods for reducing work stress. In the end we concluded that this article speaks to the much-ignored subject of 'relieving work stress over a weekend. This topic is really new to the society in which we are living. In the whole article the authors are trying to emphasize that how actually weekend is very helpful in reliving the work stress. So that employees can be more productive during the week. Often we have noted that in the societies like us stress relieving is not a favorable topic. Whatever we do on weekends is less stressful as compared to work on job because on job we are accountable for every act but at weekends we are free from any accountability this thing reduces the mental stress.