Associations between emotional exhaustion, social capital, workload, and latitude in decision-making among professionals working with people with disabilities.
Heavy workload and low decision freedom drive burnout in disability staff—address these to keep your team.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked 175 German disability-service staff to fill out a survey.
They wanted to know what makes staff feel burned out.
They looked at workload, decision freedom, and social support.
What they found
Staff with heavy caseloads felt more emotionally drained.
Staff who could not make daily decisions also felt more burned out.
Male staff showed higher burnout risk than female staff.
How this fits with other research
Perez et al. (2015) tested a fix. They gave staff training on emotional skills. The training cut burnout and improved coping.
Cashon et al. (2013) adds that team attitudes matter more than one staff member's traits.
Together these papers show two paths: fix the person with training, or fix the workplace with lighter loads and more choice.
Why it matters
You can cut turnover by giving staff more say in daily choices and keeping caseloads fair. Check your team's workload and decision freedom this week.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Many people working in human services in Western countries suffer from burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased personal performance. Prevention of emotional exhaustion (the first phase of burnout) constitutes a great challenge because emotional exhaustion may cause increasing turnover rates in staff and lead to a lesser quality of care. Prevention of emotional exhaustion requires knowledge of its predictors. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between emotional exhaustion, social capital, workload, and latitude in decision-making among German professionals working in the care of persons with intellectual and physical disabilities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was based on a survey in a sheltered workshop and 5 homes for disabled persons with 175 professionals. Burnout was measured with the German version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). A multivariate logistic regression analysis was computed. RESULTS: Logistic regression identified the following three significant predictors of emotional exhaustion in the sample: workload (OR, 4.192; CI, 2.136-8.227), latitude in decision-making (OR, 0.306; CI, 0.115-0.811), and male gender (OR, 4.123; CI, 1.796-9.462). Nagelkerke's Pseudo-R(2) was 0.344. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study demonstrate that specific factors in work organization are associated with emotional exhaustion. Taking into account sociodemographic changes and the upcoming challenges for human services professionals, the results underline the importance of considering aspects of organization at the workplace to prevent burnout. Specific circumstances of male employees must be considered.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.10.021