BackgroundEmployees exposed to stre

Background
Employees exposed to stressful work conditions experience strain and suffer from poor wellbeing,
which in turn has harmful effects on job performance and increases sickness absences.
According to the European Working Conditions Survey, 30–40% of workers report mental
health problems and stress-related disorders which are the biggest overall cause of early death
in Europe [1,2].
It has been shown that unwinding from one’s job demands (i.e., recovery) is important for
reducing the negative effects of work stress [3]. Recovery refers to the process during which
an individual’s functioning returns to its pre-stressor level, and depleted resources are
replenished [4]. In fact, in modern society, which is characterized by a hectic pace of life,
efficiency and competitiveness in a global economy, it is likely that lack of recovery is a
greater health problem than the absolute level of strain itself [5].
Recovery from work stress may constitute a protective mechanism that acts as a buffer in the
work stress–strain relationship [3]. Accordingly, intervention studies which focus on
improving the knowledge about and the skills to effectively recover from work stress are
urgently needed [6]. Therefore, our intervention study is aimed at promoting recovery in
workers. In doing so, we focus on lunch breaks as within-working day (internal) recovery.
Surprisingly, internal recovery has received much less attention than off-job (external)
recovery [7], although most people spend about half of their day at their workplaces. Work
breaks represent a period of time during which work-relevant tasks are neither required nor
expected [8]. The study of within-day work breaks dates back to Mayo and the Hawthorne
Studies in the 1930’s. However, since then the issue has not been examined with a specific
focus on recovery from work stress and the underlying mechanisms (see [9], for a review).
The few existing studies suggest that the types of activities people engage in during work
breaks have implications for their well-being as well as their performance. For instance,
feelings of recovery after work breaks were associated with more vigor and work-family