Who Benefits More from Physical Exercise? On the Relations between Personality, Physical Exercise, and Well-Being

Abstract

Although employers believe that encouraging and supporting physical exercise activities by purchasing fitness equipment and building sports venues can improve employees’ well-being, the utilization rate is rather low. Since most of the evidence of the well-being promotion in the workplace concentrated on the perspectives of organizational factors and psychosocial factors and focused on the reduction of the negative affect of well-being, it is still an open question whether physical exercise has benefits on both negative and positive affect of well-being and who benefits more from physical exercise. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of physical exercise on occupational well-being (job burnout and work engagement) and examine whether effectiveness depends on personality traits. Online questionnaires were distributed. The sample included 671 participants from different enterprises in China. Results showed that the effectiveness of physical exercise was also applicable to well-being in the workplace. Physical exercise was negatively correlated with job burnout and positively correlated with work engagement. The effectiveness was different among employees with different personality traits. Contrary to our expectation, individuals with neuroticism were more likely to improve their work engagement through physical exercise. Extroversion and conscientiousness weakened the benefits of physical exercise. Therefore, differences of effectiveness among different personality traits emphasize the need for a more personalized strategy in physical exercise interventions.