143 Proactive Vitality Management Among Employees with Chronic Liver Disease strategies to influence their own health and motivation. For example, through job crafting, individuals may influence their levels of exhaustion and work engagement by altering their levels of job demands and job resources, respectively (Tims et al., 2012). Additionally, individuals may engage in ‘playful work design’ behaviors to create a more fun and challenging work experience for themselves, thereby increasing their own work engagement (Bakker et al., 2020; Scharp et al., 2019). Based on the importance of physical and mental energy for occupational health and performance, the present study centers on how chronically ill individuals may use proactive vitality management as a behavioral strategy to directly influence JD-R theory’s two main processes. The Health Impairment Process Central to the health impairment process is the premise that, as a consequence of physical, affective, and cognitive strain, people may experience higher exhaustion levels. In turn, higher exhaustion may result in reduced functional capacity at work – indicated by, for example, performance decrements and absenteeism (e.g., Bakker et al., Bakker et al., 2003a; 2004, 2008; Cropanzano et al., 2003; Demerouti et al., 2001; Schaufeli et al., 2009; Taris, 2006). According to Hockey (1997), individuals may employ performance-protection strategies to cope with demanding situations. However, while performance on primary tasks may be protected, this requires increased subjective effort, and may produce performance decrements on secondary tasks or activities, as well as fatigue after-effects. Therefore, it is important that individuals aim to protect their ‘working effort reserves’ to be able to deal with demanding situations. Findings fromearlier studies suggest that proactive vitalitymanagement relates to lower levels of fatigue and exhaustion (Bălăceanu et al., 2021; Op den Kamp et al., 2018; Ye et al., 2020). We hypothesize that chronically ill employees may also be able to conserve and replenish valuable physical and psychological resources through proactive vitality management. By proactively managing their physical and mental energy, they may become better equipped with essential resources to deal with challenges or job demands at work. Doing so may mitigate health impairment effects, including exhaustion and corresponding drops in functional work capacity over time. Based on earlier health impairment studies and taking into account the context of working with chronic illness, we have operationalized (reduced) functional work capacity as experienced functional 6
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