Past research studied how daily interruptions are job demands that reduce interrupted employees’ work engagement. We shifted perspectives to the interrupting employees and examined how interruptions may be positively related to job resources conducive to their work engagement. In doing so, we differentiated between four interruption types that we derived from key reasons for interruptions. We expected these interruption types to serve distinct functions for interrupting employees, allowing them to attain different job resources. Building on the motivational process of the job demands-resources model, we hypothesized that performing interruptions would be positively associated with interrupting employees’ work engagement by contributing to three social job resources: received task support, belongingness, and prosocial impact. We report findings from a two-week diary study with two daily measurement occasions (N = 390 employees; n = 3,383 days). Multilevel path analysis showed that three of the four interruption types were indirectly positively related to interrupting employees’ work engagement via the three job resources. Altogether, we contribute to a more nuanced understanding of interruptions by studying two important yet overlooked aspects of interruptions: the interrupting employees and their reasons for interruptions. Our new approach to examining interruptions suggests that interruptions can also facilitate work engagement.
