Lecture 8: Burnout & Work Engagement Flashcards
(49 cards)
1
Q
How is burnout and work engagement linked to wellbeing and motivation?
A
- Burnout includes feelings of exhaustion and cynicism/disengagement toward work
- Work engagement is a state of high activation with feelings of excitement, energy, and enthusiasm
- The JD-R model explains these outcomes through job characteristics (demands and resources)
- Burnout is primarily predicted by job demands (aspects requiring sustained physical or mental effort)
- Work engagement is primarily predicted by job resources (aspects that help achieve work goals, reduce demands, or stimulate growth)
- research on autoimmune illnesses indicates they experience fatigue, pain, depression and anxiety that affect productivity and absence
1
Q
Why is occupational health important?
A
- The prevalence of autoimmune diseases is increasing, affecting approximately 5-8% of the population
- Most occupational health research treats health as an outcome rather than a predictor
- The authors propose that health status should be considered a personal resource within the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework
- The research examines whether health impairments (autoimmune illness symptoms) explain variance in burnout and work engagement beyond job demands and resources
2
Q
Conservation of resources theory
A
- Resources are “entities that either are centrally valued in their own right, or act as means to obtain centrally valued ends” (Hobfoll, 2002)
- COR theory states that humans try to accumulate and maintain resources
- Resource loss weighs heavier than resource gain
- Those with fewer resources are more vulnerable to resource loss and less capable of resource gain
- Health is positioned as an energetic resource that can facilitate access to other resources and is volatile (depletes when used)
- Employees with autoimmune illness and high symptom severity experience resource lack, making them vulnerable to resource loss and heightening risk of burnout due to loss spirals
3
Q
Hypotheses and overview of studies Cook et al?
A
Hypothesis 1: Autoimmune illness symptom severity explains variance in employee burnout above and beyond the effects of job demands and resources
Hypothesis 2: Autoimmune illness symptom severity explains variance in work engagement above and beyond the effects of job demands and resources
The paper includes two longitudinal studies with employees with autoimmune illnesses [[6]]:
- Study 1: Participants with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)
- Study 2: Participants with multiple sclerosis (MS)
Both studies include job demands and resources as covariates to isolate the effects of symptom severity.
4
Q
What are the methods of the studies Cook et al?
A
1: recruited through crohn’s and colitis society, with a baseline and follow-up after 6 months. Surveys were given online. Measured symptom severity, job demands, job resources, burnout and work engagement
2: recruited those with MS diagnoses through social media and online discussion boards, with a baseline and follow-up after 1 month. Measured MS symptom severity, burnout, work engagement, job demands, job resources, controls like gender, age, type of MS and COVID 19 measures: changes in working conditions, remote working
5
Q
Study 1 results Cook and Zill 2023?
A
- Symptom severity significantly correlated with exhaustion burnout, total burnout, vigor, and total work engagement
- No significant correlations between symptom severity and other types of work engagement, job demands, or resources [[9-10]]
- H1 (Burnout): Symptom severity significantly related to exhaustion burnout and total burnout, explaining 25% of variance in exhaustion and 12% in total burnout, but not significantly related to disengagement burnout
- H2 (Engagement): Symptom severity significantly related to vigor and total work engagement , explaining 6% of variance in vigor and 3% in total work engagement, but not significantly related to dedication or absorption dimensions
5
Q
What was concluded about study 1?
A
baseline symptom severity was a strong predictor of exhaustion burnout at follow-up, explaining more variance than job demands, job resources, and gender combined. This supports the idea that symptom severity plays a crucial role in the health impairment process beyond job characteristics. For work engagement, symptom severity impacts the vigor dimension, suggesting employees experiencing more IBD symptoms feel less energized and perceive lower degrees of mental resilience
5
Q
Results of study 2 Cook and Zill 2023?
A
Study 2 largely replicated the findings from Study 1, showing that people experiencing more severe MS symptoms experience more exhaustion and overall burnout. Unlike Study 1, Study 2 also found that symptom severity was associated with disengagement burnout. For work engagement, as in Study 1, people with more severe symptoms experienced lower levels of vigor work engagement
5
Q
What are the theoretical implications of Cook and Zill 2023?
A
- Health status should be viewed not only as an outcome but as an input/predictor variable
- Individual health status as an energy resource impacts burnout and engagement beyond job characteristics
- Symptom severity consistently explained exhaustion and general burnout variance across both studies
- The association with disengagement was only found in Study 2, possibly due to:
- Sample size limitations in Study 1
- MS symptoms include cognitive difficulties, which may be more likely to lead to disengagement
- Symptom severity was consistently associated with vigor but not other engagement dimensions because:
- Vigor is most closely connected to energy investment in work
- Absorption is a less central indicator of work engagement
- Dedication may be less affected by health impairments
5
Q
Practical and societal implications
A
- Organizations need more fine-tuned interventions considering health status diversity
- Practitioners should examine accessibility of existing interventions
- Employers should create supportive environments for discussing health issues
- Organizations should ensure occupational health measures don’t exclude employees with chronic illnesses
5
Q
Spoon theory metaphor
A
- The theory represents limited daily energy as a fixed number of “spoons”
- Each activity costs “spoons,” sometimes depleting resources before arriving at work
- This metaphor aligns with the COR theory’s concept of limited resources
5
Q
What did Cook and Zill conclude?
A
The authors conclude that chronic illnesses represent an overlooked diversity category in organizations [[26]]. By excluding differences in baseline health status in theory and research, occupational health research risks:
- Overlooking essential individual-level factors affecting well-being and motivation
- Promoting a perspective where issues of people with chronic illness remain invisible
- Leading employers to neglect employees for whom health has different personal meaning
The authors call for researchers to identify factors that improve or complicate work life for employees with chronic illnesses and provide evidence-based suggestions for inclusion and successful management of a health-diverse workforce.
5
Q
What were the aims of Bakker et al 2014?
A
- Discuss the main definitions and conceptualizations of both concepts
- Review the most important antecedents and consequences of burnout and work engagement
- Use job demands-resources theory to integrate research findings
- Discuss future research directions
6
Q
How was burnout initially conceptualized?
A
- Burnout was first coined by Freudenberger in the 1970s to describe gradual emotional depletion and loss of motivation among volunteers in New York aid organizations [[3]]
- Freudenberger defined burnout as “a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by one’s professional life” and “the extinction of motivation or incentive” [[3]]
- Simultaneously, Maslach and colleagues interviewed human-services workers in California and found they experienced similar symptoms
6
Q
Maslach’s three-dimensional model
A
- Maslach and Jackson defined burnout as a syndrome characterized by three dimensions: [[3-4]]
- Emotional exhaustion: Feelings of being emotionally drained by contact with others
- Depersonalization: Negative or excessively detached response toward service recipients
- Reduced personal accomplishment: Decline in feelings of competence and successful achievement
6
Q
How has the concept of burnout evolved?
A
- Originally assumed to be a response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors at work
- Initially thought to be exclusive to human-services sector, but later expanded to all occupations
6
Q
How has burnout been measured?
A
- Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) adapted the concept for general use by: [[3-4]]
- Replacing depersonalization with cynicism (distant attitude toward work in general)
- Replacing reduced personal accomplishment with reduced professional efficacy
- Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI): Assesses exhaustion and disengagement [[3]]
- Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM): Assesses physical fatigue and cognitive weariness
6
Q
What is Kahn’s conceptualization of engagement?
A
- Kahn (1990) introduced engagement as “harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles”
- Engaged employees express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during work
- A dialectical relationship exists between the person who drives personal energies into work and the work role that allows for self-expression
6
Q
Maslach & Leiter’s approach
A
- Direct opposites of burnout dimensions
- Engagement characterized by energy, involvement, and efficacy
- Assessed by opposite pattern of scores on MBI-GS
7
Q
What is Shaufeli et al’s approach?
A
- Engagement as an independent, distinct concept negatively related to burnout
- Defined as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption”
- Three dimensions:
- Vigor: High energy, mental resilience, willingness to invest effort, persistence
- Dedication: Strong involvement, sense of significance, enthusiasm, challenge
- Absorption: Full concentration and happy engrossment in work
8
Q
What is the relationship between burnout and engagement?
A
- Vigor and dedication are considered direct opposites of exhaustion and cynicism [[4]]
- The continuum spanned by exhaustion and vigor is labeled “energy” [[4]]
- The continuum spanned by cynicism and dedication is labeled “identification” [[4]]
- Work engagement = high energy + strong identification with work [[4]]
- Burnout = low energy + poor identification with work
9
Q
What are the situational antecedents of burnout?
A
- Job demands are more important predictors of burnout than job resources
- Job demands require sustained physical, emotional, or cognitive effort and are associated with physiological and psychological costs
- Key job demands predicting burnout: role ambiguity, role conflict, role stress, stressful events, workload and work pressure.
- Alarcon’s meta-analysis confirmed the crucial role of job demands in predicting burnout [[5]]
- Job resources have a consistent negative relationship with burnout, particularly cynicism [[5-6]]
- Job resources buffer the relationship between job demands and burnout [[6]]
- Bakker et al. (2005a) found that work overload, emotional demands, physical demands, and work-home interference did not result in high burnout if employees had sufficient resources
10
Q
What are the individual factor antecedents of burnout?
A
- Personality plays an important role in burnout development [[6-7]]
- Alarcon et al.’s (2009) meta-analysis found that four of the Big Five factors (emotional stability, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness) are consistently negatively related to burnout [[6]]
- Emotional stability was the most important predictor of exhaustion and depersonalization [[6]]
- Extraversion was the most important predictor of personal accomplishment [[6]]
- Lower-order personality factors also related to burnout: self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, positive/negative affectivity, optimism, proactive personality, and hardiness
11
Q
What are the situational factor antecedents of work engagement?
A
- Job resources are the most important predictors of work engagement
- job resources that predict engagement: task variety, task significant, autonomy, feedback, social support from colleagues, high quality relationships with supervisor, transformational leadership
- Job resources contribute to work engagement over time and from day to day [[7]]
- Job resources act as buffers and diminish the negative relationship between job demands and work engagement [[7]]
- Job resources influence work engagement especially when employees face high job demands [[7]]
- Resources contribute to work engagement in interaction with high job demands
12
What are the individual factor antecedents of work engagement?
- Personality plays an important role in work engagement
- Big Five factors related to higher engagement: emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness
- Lower-order individual factors (personal resources) positively related to engagement: self-efficacy, optimism, self-esteem
- Other factors positively related to engagement: core self-evaluations, positive affect, sense of coherence
- Proactive personality relates to work engagement through job crafting
13
What are the health-related outcomes of burnout?
- Burnout related to psychological health problems:
- Depression and anxiety disorders
- Alcohol dependence
- Mood disturbance
- Sleep disturbance
- Memory impairment
- Burnout leads to poor physical health:
- Sleep disturbances
- Headaches
- Respiratory infections
- Gastrointestinal infections
- Musculoskeletal problems
- Increased risk of infections (e.g., common cold)
- Type 2 diabetes
- Cardiovascular diseases
- Increased risk of all-cause mortality
14
What are the job-related outcomes of burnout?
- Emotional exhaustion predicts subsequent work performance
- Burnout negatively related to in-role performance
- Burnout predicts future absence duration but not absence frequency
- Burnout increases risk of medically certified absence episodes
15
What are the motivational outcomes of engagement?
- Engagement linked to better health, including healthy cardiac autonomic activity
- Engaged employees experience more active, positive emotions
- Engaged employees more likely to engage in leisure-time activities that foster relaxation
- Engagement associated with:
- Inspiration, energy, cheerfulness, enthusiasm
- Happiness (including at home)
- Creativity
- Active learning behavior
- Proactive behavior
16
What are the job-related outcomes of engagement?
- Engaged employees perform better because they:
- Experience positive emotions
- Have better health
- Look for feedback and support
- Transmit engagement to colleagues
- Engagement predicts:
- Higher self-reported and supervisor-rated in-role performance
- Higher extrarole performance
- Organizational citizenship behaviors
- Client satisfaction
- Customer loyalty
- Higher profitability
17
What are the 3 propositions of JD-R?
- First proposition: All job characteristics can be modeled using two categories - job demands and job resources
- The theory can be applied to all work environments and tailored to specific occupations
-- Second proposition: Job demands and resources trigger two fairly independent processes [[13]]
1. **Health impairment process**: Job demands → exhaustion → health problems
2. **Motivational process**: Job resources → work engagement → positive outcomes
- Job demands cost effort and consume energetic resources [[13]]
- Job resources fulfill basic psychological needs (autonomy, relatedness, competence)
- Third proposition: Job demands and resources interact in predicting occupational well-being
- - Two possible interactions:
1. Job resources buffer the impact of job demands on strain [[13-14]]
2. Job demands amplify the impact of job resources on motivation/engagement
18
What is the role of personal resources?
- Personal resources are positive self-evaluations linked to resiliency
- Personal resources predict goal setting, motivation, performance, job and life satisfaction [[14]]
- Personal resources partly mediate the relationship between job resources and work engagement
- Reciprocal relationship between personal resources, job resources, and work engagement over time
19
What is the role of job crafting?
- Job crafting defined as physical and cognitive changes individuals make in task or relational boundaries
- Tims et al. defined job crafting as changes employees make regarding job demands and resources
- Four types of job crafting behaviors:
1. Increasing structural job resources
2. Increasing social job resources
3. Increasing (challenging) job demands
4. Decreasing (hindrance) job demands
- Employees who craft job resources show increased structural and social resources over time [[15]]
- Increased job resources related to increased work engagement and job satisfaction
20
Organizational level interventions
1. **Optimizing job demands**: [[15]]
- Reducing hindrance demands (role ambiguity, job insecurity, conflict)
- Implementing fair procedures during organizational change
- Teaching teams to combine challenge demands with sufficient resources
2. **Increasing job resources**: [[15-16]]
- Redesigning work environment to facilitate social support and feedback
- Training employees to distill feedback from work results
- Teaching managers to provide appropriate feedback
3. **Fostering personal resources**: [[16]]
- Teaching optimism, resilience, and self-efficacy
- Arranging on-the-job training to develop personal resources
21
Individual interventions
- Internet versions of JD-R questionnaires with tailored feedback [[16]]
- Job crafting training [[16]]
- Strengths use training [[16]]
- Recovery training (including relaxation techniques or mindfulness)
22
What should future research focus on according to Bakker at el?
- Need to examine within-person fluctuations in burnout and engagement
- engagement may fluctuate from hour to hour, nature of task may determine engagement level, experience sampling method could investigate momentary fluctuations
- need to explore whether engagement and burnout predict job crafting
- job crafting could be missing link from burnout-> future job demands/resources
- need to understand how burnout and engagement influence observable behaviours
- burnout may increase aggressive + counterproductive work behaviour
-engagement may increase OCB + proactive behaviour
- observable behaviours will influence others through contagion processes
23
What did Bakker et al conclude?
- Burnout and work engagement are important concepts predicting significant outcomes
- Burnout is primarily caused by high job demands and to a lesser extent by low job resources
- Work engagement is primarily caused by job resources
- Individual characteristics relate differently to burnout versus engagement
- Burnout relates more strongly to health outcomes
- Work engagement relates more strongly to motivational outcomes
- Burnout and work engagement represent substantially different experiences
- Several unanswered questions remain for future research
24
Why is the JD-R model so popular?
1. Its balanced approach considering both positive (resources) and negative (demands) job characteristics
2. Its broad scope and flexibility, as it potentially includes all job demands and resources
3. Its heuristic nature, representing a way of thinking about how job (and personal) characteristics influence employee health, well-being, and motivation
However, the model's flexibility and broad application also raise questions about its theoretical precision.
25
What does the early JD-R model consist of?
- Job demands: "physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or mental effort and are associated with physiological and psychological costs"
- Job resources: "physical, social, or organizational aspects of the job that may: (a) be functional in achieving work goals; (b) reduce job demands and associated costs; (c) stimulate personal growth and development"
- Proposed two processes for burnout development:
1. Excessive job demands leading to exhaustion (energetic component)
2. Lack of resources leading to withdrawal/disengagement (motivational component)
- Research confirmed main effects: job demands associated with exhaustion, lacking resources linked to disengagement
- Job resources mitigate negative effects of job demands on exhaustion
- Performance measures were later included as outcomes of burnout
26
What was the revised JD-R model?
- Added work engagement alongside burnout
- Considered burnout and engagement as mediators between job characteristics and outcomes
- Introduced two key processes:
1. Health impairment process: job demands → burnout → health problems
2. Motivational process: job resources → engagement → organizational outcomes
- Job resources have both extrinsic and intrinsic motivational roles:
- Extrinsic: instrumental in achieving work goals
- Intrinsic: satisfy basic human needs (autonomy, relatedness, competence)
27
What did evidence find to support the JD-R model?
- Strong evidence for the revised JD-R model across multiple countries, cultures, and occupational groups
- Studies confirmed both health impairment and motivational processes
- In most cases, full mediation was found for both burnout and engagement
- Evidence for joint effects of demands and resources was relatively weak
- Job demands and resources impact burnout and work engagement over time
- - Finnish dentists study (Hakanen et al., 2008): job resources influenced future engagement, which predicted commitment; job demands predicted burnout, which predicted depression
- Dutch managers study (Schaufeli et al., 2009): increases in demands and decreases in resources predicted burnout; increases in resources predicted engagement
- limited evidence for reversed causation
28
How have personal resources been integrated into the JD-R model?
1. **Direct impact on well-being**
- Personal resources reduce burnout and increase engagement
- Reciprocal relation between engagement and personal resources suggests a "gain cycle"
2. **Moderating the relation between job characteristics and well-being**
- Personal resources buffer negative effects of job demands on burnout
- They can exacerbate positive effects of job resources on engagement
- like intrinsic motivation, prevention/promotion focus
3. **Mediating the relation between job characteristics and well-being**
- Resources accumulate (Conservation of Resources theory)
- Job resources develop feelings of self-confidence and optimism
- These personal resources relate positively to engagement
- Basic psychological needs satisfaction mediates relations between job characteristics and outcomes
4. **Influencing the perception of job characteristics**
- Personal resources shape how people understand their environment (Social Cognitive Theory)
- Employee core self-evaluation determines perception of job characteristics
- Job resources can mediate between personal resources and engagement
5. **Acting as a "third variable"**
- Personal resources affect both perception of job characteristics and employee well-being
29
How have job demands been differentiated?
- Challenges: potential to promote mastery, growth (positive relation to engagement)
- Hindrances: thwart growth and goals (negative relation to engagement)
30
How have job demands been applied to safety behaviours?
- Perceived management commitment to safety
- Psychosocial safety climate as organizational resource
31
What are the day-to-day dynamics of the JD-R model?
- Diary studies examining within-employee variations over time
- Day-specific resources promote engagement over a working week
- Day-specific job control facilitates coping with demands
- Daily work engagement mediates between resources and performance
- Findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of the motivational process
32
What are the 6 unresolved issues with the JD-R model?
1. Epistemological status: it is an open, heuristic model rather than a specific model with well-defined components. This makes it flexible to be used in different contexts, but has limited generalizability. Other explanatory frameworks are need like COR, SDT
2. The nature of job demands and resources: not clear cut distinction, as lack of resources may function as demands, and can be distinguished by their valence
3. The role of personal resources: there are many possible roles with no single best way to integrate PR, personal vulnerability factors like neuroticism, workaholism could be included
4. processes may represent two sides of the same coin: negative relations between job demands and resources, burnout and engagement, job resources and burnout
5. Reciprocal causation: linear causation is overly simplistic, research should address dynamic relations and gain spirals
6. Multilevel issues: JD-R proposes an individual-level approach, need to follow compatibility principles - variables must be at the same level of specificity, social-psychological processes need consideration
33
How should job demands and resources be re-defined?
- Job demands: negatively valued aspects requiring effort
- Job resources: positively valued aspects functional for goals
34
What are the key contributions of the JD-R model?
1. Non-limitative in terms of study concepts - can be tailored to specific organizational needs
2. Considers both negative and positive outcomes and processes
3. Appeals to different occupational groups (occupational health and human resources)
4. Complements and integrates previous approaches
35
How to implement the JD-R model?
1. Identifying the problem
2. Designing the JD-R monitor
3. Internal communication
4. Survey and individual feedback
5. Analysis and reporting
6. Survey feedback
7. Interventions (individual, team, organizational)
8. Evaluation
36
Concluding remarks of Schaufeli et al?
- JD-R model's distinctive feature is its generality and flexibility
- The model provides a simple classification of job characteristics
- Future development should address:
- Reconceptualization of demands and resources based on valence
- Extension to include personal resources and vulnerabilities
- Incorporation of reciprocal causation and gain spirals
- The model's flexibility allows it to accommodate various ideas and findings
- It serves its purpose as a heuristic model well
