Making Leisure Work: Leisure Crafting as Active Recovery from Stressful Work

A globalized economy, an aging labor force and modern technology change the way work is carried out and experienced. Boundaries between work and non-work vanish, making it difficult to recover from job stress during off-job time with detrimental consequences for employees´ subjective well-being and performance. The work/non-work interface is as yet poorly understood. This project will focus on leisure crafting: employees´ deliberate attempt to engage in or refrain from certain leisure activities to satisfy needs that are difficult or impossible to meet during work. This is assumed to enhance their well-being and performance. This interdisciplinary, cross-cultural project will use advanced methodological approaches from recovery and leisure research to understand and facilitate leisure crafting in order to preserve and improve quality of life, long-term workability, and individual performance, which ultimately determines the competitiveness of Finnish companies in a global market.