TASK 6: Burnout

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Hulscheger et al.

Mindfulness

trait mindfulness

state mindfulness

Affective events theory

  • work events are proximal causes of employee affective reactions and these reactions, in turn, predict job satisfaction

mindfulness: facilitates apative stress appraisal, and promotes delf-determined behavior consistend with individuals needs and values

mediating role of emotion regulation

surface/deep acting

surface acting - emotional exhaustion and negatively related to job satisfaction

Gross’s process model of emotion regulation

surface acting involves 3 sub-processes

A) negative evaluation of a work event that

B) triggers response tendencies that

C) need to be overridden by response modulation in terms of faking and/or suppressing emotions

mindfulness relates negatively to surface acting because:

  1. reperceiving = decoupling of the self from events: promotes the experience of internal and external events without evaluation
  1. decreases automaticity of mental processes
  • promotes self-regulation by interrupting automatic thought and behavior patterns and thereby allowing individuals to react in a self-determined and flexible wa

STUDY 1

METHODS:

  • 5-day diary study with 219 employees
  • link of trait- and state-mindfulness with daily reports of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction + the mediating role of surface acting

RESULTS

  • mindfulness negatively related to emotional exhaustion and positively related to job satisfaction at both the within- and the between-person levels
  • Both relationships were mediated by surface acting at both levels of analysis

CRTICISMI

  • analyses of diary studies focus on within-day relationships between variables  cross-sectional causal inferences can therefore not be drawn
  • remains unclear whether mindfulness truly leads to a reduction in surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction

STUDY 2:

METHODS:

  • experimental field study
  • randomly assigned to a self-training mindfulness intervention group or a control group
  • insights into the causal nature of relationships between mindfulness, surface acting, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction in a field setting

RESULTS:

  • participants in the mindfulness intervention group experienced significantly less emotional exhaustion and more job satisfaction than participants in the control group
  • mindfulness self-training on emotional exhaustion was mediated by surface acting

CONCLUSIONS

  1. for employees working in emotionally demanding jobs, mindfulness promotes job satisfaction and helps preventing burnout in terms of emotional exhaustion
  1. state and trait mindfulness are inversely related to employees’ emotional exhaustion and positively related to their job satisfaction
  1. mindfulness precedes and affects emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction
  1. BUT: effects may in fact be bidirectional
  1. mindfulness was more strongly related to emotional exhaustion than to job satisfaction, both when considering trait as well as state mindfulness

 surface acting may have a stronger effect on burnout, especially emotional exhaustion, than on job satisfaction

Oerlemans et al.

Burnout

  • indicator of long-term well-being (high levels of exhaustion and disengagement toward the job)
  • results from an unfavorable work environment characterized by high job demands + low job resources

Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model

  • long-term exposure to job demands (e.g., work overload, emotional demands) will exhaust employees’ cognitive and physical resources, which in the long run may lead to the depletion of energy (exhaustion) and health problems

effort-recovery (ER) theory

  • work-related effort produces physical and physiological costs associated with working
  • recovery process may be insufficient or inadequate  short-term work-related load reactions (e.g., fatigue) as a consequence of work-related efforts may turn into long-term chronic health problems (prolonged fatigue, chronic tension, sleep deprivation)

Leisure activities - recovery

a) low-effort activities (resting, doing nothing, or watching TV)

  • do not occupy physical / cognitive resources normally required to accomplish work related tasks
  • allow psychobiological systems to return to their prestressor state

b) Social activities

  • may lead to the acquisition of social resources because
  • open up channels for social support
  • draw on different personal resources than those required to accomplish work-related tasks

c) Physical activities

  • may contribute to daily recovery through physiological mechanisms
  • Exercise increases the level of endorphins, cause a higher body temperature, or lead to enhanced secretion of noradrenalin, serotonin, and dopamine

LIMITATION : within- person, daily processes of work and recovery are examined without considering whether general well-being characteristics on a between-person level would moderate such within-person processes

STUDY

AIM: examining whether specific patterns of time spent on off-job activities can help employees who are at risk of burnout to adequately recover from their work-related efforts on a daily basis

METHOD:

  • Burnout was operationalized by its two core dimensions:

a) Exhaustion = combination of affective, physical, and cognitive aspects of exhaustion

b) disengagement from work = general lack of interest in the job

  • Daily recovery on workdays assessed by state levels of physical vigor and cognitive liveliness during off-job time:

a) Physical vigor = affective state where individuals feel full of pep and experience physical strength

b) cognitive liveliness = feeling alert, being creative, and thinking rapidly

  • self-reported daily recovery before going to sleep

RESULTS

  1. low in burnout: off-job time spent working had no significant effect on state physical vigot, state cognitive liveliness + state recovery


  2. high in burnout: off-job time spent working related negatively to state physical vigor, state cognitive liveliness + state recovery (confirmed hypothesis 1).


  3. low in burnout: off-job time spent on low-effort activities not significantly related to state physical vigor + state cognitive liveliness


  4. high in burnout: off-job time spent on low-effort activities related positively to state physical vigor + state cognitive liveliness (hypothesis 2 confirmed for two state recovery outcomes)


  5. for both employees low and high in burnout, daily socializing during off-job time related positively to state physical vigor, state cognitive liveliness + state recovery (stronger for high burnout  hypothesis 2 was fully confirmed)


  6. Burnout did not moderate the within-person relationships of off-job time spent on physical activities and the three state recovery




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CONCLUSION:

  1. important for employees who are at risk of burnout to stop spending time on work-related activities during off-job time + start spending more time on low-effort and social activities in order to adequately recover from work on a daily basis
  1. For employees with low burnout levels, social, but not low effort activities, are beneficial for their daily recovery
  1. employees with low burnout levels are not in immediate danger when continuing their work during off-job time, as it does not (yet) have a negative impact on their daily recovery
  1. physical activities contributed to daily recovery for all employees

 physical activities are related to physiological mechanisms that have equal positive effects for all individuals