Have Your Cake and Eat It Too? Understanding Leisure-Work Synergizing and Its Impact on Employee Thriving.

This article focuses on the concept of leisure-work synergizing, defined as the intentional integration of work-related elements into leisure activities to build work-relevant skills and competencies during employees' free time. Drawing on a model of thriving at work, the research examines how this agentic, boundary-blurring practice influences employee thriving by fostering positive emotions like self-assurance, while also considering potential negative effects such as fatigue. Empirical studies, including validation of a leisure-work synergizing measure and a multiwave experience sampling study with employees, found that leisure-work synergizing positively relates to next-day self-assurance and thriving at work, with little evidence of increased fatigue; moreover, employees who prefer integrating work and nonwork domains experience less fatigue from this practice. The findings challenge traditional views of strict work-leisure separation by highlighting leisure-work synergizing as a proactive, enriching strategy that supports employee development and well-being, with implications for both individuals and managers in managing work-nonwork boundaries.