Understanding the relationship between prior to end-of-workday physical activity and work–life balance: A within-person approach.

Although physical activity has typically been conceptualized by organizational scholars as a postwork activity that spills over to enhance work-related experiences, little is known about how physical activity prior to the end of the workday spills over to affect nonwork criteria. Drawing from Hirschi, Shockley, and Zacher’s (2019) action regulation model of work–life balance, we develop a process-oriented model of the implications of prior to end-of-workday physical activity for daily satisfaction with work–life balance. We examine our conceptual model in a 5-day daily diary study that incorporates objective measurements of physical activity (i.e., prior to end-of-workday steps assessed via actigraph) collected from 71 full-time employees. Consistent with our predictions, prior to end-of-workday physical activity yields greater levels of end-of-workday vigor, a boundary-spanning resource that in turn provides the energetic bandwidth to simultaneously achieve work-related (i.e., daily work recovery) and non-work-related (i.e., daily family absorption) goals during the postwork period, ultimately enhancing daily satisfaction with work–life balance. We discuss how our findings expand the scope of theorizing surrounding employee physical activity to encompass nonwork criteria and yield actionable recommendations to harness prior to end-of-workday physical activity as a positive resource.