Mediating effects of emotional exhaustion on the relationship between job demand–control model and mental health

Emotional Exhaustion Variables in Trainee Teachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

INTRODUCTION

emotional exhaustion among trainee teachers is a relevant topic since it could have repercussions regarding the lives of their future pupils. Our objective was to determine the degree of trainee teachers' emotional exhaustion and associated variables during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

the design was cross-sectional and descriptive. Questionnaires with sociodemographic variables, perceptions of mental health, and the Emotional Exhaustion Scale (ECE) (α = 0.890; ω = 0.893) validated for the Chilean context were answered by 204 trainee teachers. The results were analyzed using SPSS software version 25 and the Emotional Exhaustion Interpretation Table (EES-Int).

RESULTS

the results show that 92.2% of the trainee teachers presented a worsening in their mental health, stress (66.2%), irritability (38.2%), anxiety (37.7%), and depressive symptoms (32.8%). Online classes (73.04%) and the pandemic (67.6%) were the main influencing factors. Education students who perceived their mental health had worsened became 6.63 times more likely to develop emotional exhaustion [AOR = 6.63; 95% CI: 1.78, 24.69]. In addition, education students with a high perception of academic stress were 7.45 more likely to develop emotional exhaustion [AOR = 7.45; 95% CI: 1.98, 28.09].

CONCLUSION

we can conclude that trainee teachers have high levels of emotional exhaustion and their perception of their mental health and the academic stress they are being subjected to during the COVID-19 pandemic may lead them to present symptoms of frequent or permanent problems with concentration, attention, recall of information, dissatisfaction with their performance, and frequent learning difficulties. From the affective dimension, they present frequent or permanent anxiety, restlessness, irritability, indifference, low mood, and psychomatization. From the socio-interactional dimension, they present frequent or permanent social withdrawal, interpersonal problems, problems at work or school, and family and relationship problems. Increasing the sample to delve into emotional exhaustion by subject area is necessary. For future studies, research should be conducted on the causes of emotional exhaustion by subject area and the coping strategies of trainee teachers to understand differences and provide input on emotional support in practice.

Does engagement help to reduce insomnia when workers are emotionally exhausted?

Insomnia is one of the most common problems, affecting more than 35% of the world's population. To achieve a better understanding of this problem the focus of this research is to understand how emotional exhaustion at work may lead to insomnia. To help to combat it, we tested a mediation model including engagement factors. The sample was composed of 823 participants. 38.3% (315 subjects) were male and 61.7% (508 subjects) were female. Mean age was 42.65 years old (9.05 = SD). Main results showed that emotional exhaustion is directly and statistically significant related to insomnia. However, different engagement factors showed different weights in buffering this relationship. Emotional exhaustion showed a statistically significant impact on insomnia. Vigor and absorption helped to buffer the impact of emotional exhaustion over insomnia. Our study has some limitations. First, the sample was acquired by not aleatory processes. Another limitation is that our sample was composed of individuals with decision-making capacity. Lastly, our research is a transversal study. Future research should take these limitations into account and conduct longitudinal research with aleatory sampling procedures.

Cyberloafing at the workplace: effect of Zhong-Yong thinking on mental health and mindfulness as a moderating role

Purpose

This study aims to integrate conservation of resources theory discus the antecedents and consequences of cyberloafing as well as the boundary effect between cyberloafing and mental health.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected 431 valid questionnaires in four months. Each questionnaire was divided into two parts that had to be distributed. The interval between the first distribution and the second distribution was 15 days.

Findings

The research study revealed that employees’ Zhong-Yong thinking and cyberloafing promote mental health, and cyberloafing has a mediating effect. Mindfulness weakens the positive impact of cyberloafing on mental health.

Originality/value

The research study’s results break the stereotype that cyberloafing is not good for organizations. When managers allow employees to engage in cyberloafing at work, this is conducive to employees’ mental health, which can ensure the company’s sustainable development.

Gain or loss: the double-edged effect of empowering leadership on employees’ innovative behaviours

Purpose

Empowering leadership is often considered unequivocally positive for employees, but recent studies have shown that this ostensibly straightforward effect is more complex. The dual facets of the effect of empowering leadership – especially on employees’ innovative behaviour – have received insufficient attention. Based on job demand-resource (JD-R) theory, this study aims to propose a theoretical framework for the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ innovative behaviours with a dual process model of gain and loss.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is survey based, with 261 paired leader–employee data points collected in the People’s Republic of China.

Findings

The results show that empowering leadership has a “double-edged” effect on employees’ innovative behaviours: it affects innovative behaviours positively through employee job engagement and negatively through emotional exhaustion. Moreover, trust in leaders moderates the mediating roles of job engagement and emotional exhaustion.

Originality/value

This study contends that empowering leadership has a dual impact on employees and proposes a promising model of this double-edged effect to contrast with other complex models in the empowering leadership literature. Furthermore, this study uses JD-R theory to deeply explore the dual process whereby empowering leadership influences employees’ innovative behaviour and provides practical guidance for business management.

Smartphone use after work mediates the link between organizational norm of connectivity and emotional exhaustion: Will workaholism make a difference?

Using smartphone for work in off-work hours has been associated with negative employee outcomes. We postulate that: (1) organizational norm of connectivity precedes employees' work-related smartphone use after work, which predicts emotional exhaustion among employees; and (2) this process is moderated by employees' workaholism. We collected data from 399 full-time employees who completed six online surveys over 3 workdays to test our hypotheses. Multilevel path analysis of these data revealed that organizational norm of connectivity was more strongly related to smartphone use after work among employees with high workaholism compared to those with low workaholism. However, smartphone use was more strongly related to emotional exhaustion among those with low workaholism compared to those with high workaholism. In total, the indirect effect of organizational norm of connectivity on emotional exhaustion through work-related smartphone use after work was significant only for those with low workaholism. These findings highlight the role of organizational norm of connectivity and individual workaholism in the association of work-related smartphone use after work and negative employee outcomes. We discussed the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Social support, anxiety symptoms, and depression symptoms among residents in standardized residency training programs: the mediating effects of emotional exhaustion

BACKGROUND

Although studies indicate that social support is related to emotional exhaustion, depression symptoms, and anxiety symptoms, the underlying mechanism between those variables remains unknown.

METHODS

Based on a sample of 254 residents in standardized residency training programs, two mediation models were tested in which emotional exhaustion served as a mediator in the relationship between social support and anxiety symptoms/depression symptoms. We used the following self-reported questionnaires as instruments to collect data: zung self-rating depression scale, zung self-rating anxiety scale, social support rating scale, and emotional exhaustion scale.

RESULTS

In the final study sample, the mean age of the residents was 25.92 years old (SD =1.88), and a total of 41.3% were male, and 58.7% were female. This current study suggested that social support was proven to be a relevant factor affecting anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms. Particularly, the results also indicated that emotional exhaustion partially mediated the impact of social support on anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms among Chinese residents in the standardized residency training program.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study signifies that enhancements in social support and reduction of emotional exhaustion can directly or indirectly affect anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms among Chinese residents in the standardized residency training program. These findings will offer insight for health-sector managers to develop programs aimed at social support and adopt individual-level interventions and organization-level interventions to reduce emotional exhaustion.

The Mediating Role of Insomnia and Exhaustion in the Relationship between Secondary Traumatic Stress and Mental Health Complaints among Frontline Medical Staff during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) brought significant psychological implications for healthcare professionals. We aimed to investigate the serial mediation effect of insomnia and exhaustion in the relationship between secondary traumatic stress (STS) and mental health complaints among the frontline healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this cross-sectional study, 126 frontline healthcare workers from Romania completed validated surveys between March and April 2020. PROCESS macros were used to test the proposed hypotheses of the three-path mediation model. We computed the models for insomnia as the first mediator (M1) and exhaustion (M2) as our second mediator. STS was significantly related to insomnia. Insomnia was significantly related to exhaustion, and STS was positively related to exhaustion. In the third model, exhaustion was strongly and positively related to mental health complaints. The total indirect effect was positive, and the sequential indirect impact of STS on mental health complaints via both mediators in series (insomnia and exhaustion) was significant. Secondary traumatic stress had a positive direct effect on mental health complaints. In our limited sample, the results show that frontline medical staff during the COVID-19 outbreak have high STS, which are related to mental health complaints through insomnia and exhaustion.

How Stress Hinders Health among Chinese Public Sector Employees: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion and the Moderating Role of Perceived Organizational Support

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this study examines the detrimental effect of hindrance stressors on self-rated health among a sample of Chinese public sector employees. Analysis of survey data based on 404 MPA students from a leading Chinese university who are working in various public organizations across China suggested that hindrance stressors were negatively related to both physical and mental health (β = −0.11, p < 0.01 and β = −0.38, p < 0.001, respectively), and emotional exhaustion mediated those relationships (95% bias-corrected confidence intervals for the indirect effects on physical and mental health based on 5000 bootstrapped samples were −1.64 to −0.35 and −3.51 to −1.81, respectively, excluding 0). Furthermore, perceived organizational support moderated the effect of hindrance stressors on emotional exhaustion (β = −0.10, p < 0.05), and moderated the indirect effects of hindrance stressors on physical and mental health via emotional exhaustion (index of moderated mediation was 0.116 with bootstrapped confidence interval of 0.018–0.296 for physical health, and 0.317 with bootstrapped confidence interval of 0.008–0.663 for mental health). The effects of hindrance stressors were weaker when perceived organizational support was high, suggesting a moderating effect. Our findings not only provide important theoretical contributions to the literature on public employees’ work-related stress and associated health outcomes, but also offer practical implications to those who are interested in stress intervention to improve the wellbeing of public employees and general society.

If only my leader would just do something! Passive leadership undermines employee well-being through role stressors and psychological resource depletion

The goal of this study was to develop and test a sequential mediational model explaining the negative relationship of passive leadership to employee well-being. Based on role stress theory, we posit that passive leadership will predict higher levels of role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload. Invoking Conservation of Resources theory, we further hypothesize that these role stressors will indirectly and negatively influence two aspects of employee well-being, namely overall mental health and overall work attitude, through psychological work fatigue. Using a probability sample of 2467 US workers, structural equation modelling supported the model by showing that role stressors and psychological work fatigue partially mediated the negative relationship between passive leadership and both aspects of employee well-being. The hypothesized, sequential indirect relationships explained 47.9% of the overall relationship between passive leadership and mental health and 26.6% of the overall relationship between passive leadership and overall work attitude. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Night shift and rotating shift in association with sleep problems, burnout and minor mental disorder in male and female employees

OBJECTIVES

Shift work is associated with adverse physical and psychological health outcomes. However, the independent health effects of night work and rotating shift on workers' sleep and mental health risks and the potential gender differences have not been fully evaluated.

METHODS

We used data from a nationwide survey of representative employees of Taiwan in 2013, consisting of 16 440 employees. Participants reported their work shift patterns 1 week prior to the survey, which were classified into the four following shift types: fixed day, rotating day, fixed night and rotating night shifts. Also obtained were self-reported sleep duration, presence of insomnia, burnout and mental disorder assessed by the Brief Symptom Rating Scale.

RESULTS

Among all shift types, workers with fixed night shifts were found to have the shortest duration of sleep, highest level of burnout score, and highest prevalence of insomnia and minor mental disorders. Gender-stratified regression analyses with adjustment of age, education and psychosocial work conditions showed that both in male and female workers, fixed night shifts were associated with greater risks for short sleep duration (<7 hours per day) and insomnia. In female workers, fixed night shifts were also associated with increased risks for burnout and mental disorders, but after adjusting for insomnia, the associations between fixed night shifts and poor mental health were no longer significant.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this study suggested that a fixed night shift was associated with greater risks for sleep and mental health problems, and the associations might be mediated by sleep disturbance.

The meaning and measurement of work fatigue: Development and evaluation of the Three-Dimensional Work Fatigue Inventory (3D-WFI)

Although work fatigue represents an important construct in several substantive areas, prior conceptual definitions and measures have been inadequate in a number of ways. The goals of the present study were to develop a conceptual definition and outline the desirable characteristics of a work fatigue measure, briefly examine several prior measures of work fatigue-related constructs, and develop and evaluate a new measure of work fatigue. The Three-Dimensional Work Fatigue Inventory (3D-WFI) provides separate and commensurate assessments of physical, mental, and emotional work fatigue. Results from a pilot study (n = 207) and a broader evaluative study of U.S. wage and salary workers (n = 2,477) suggest that the 3D-WFI is psychometrically sound and evinces a meaningful pattern of relations with variables that comprise the nomological network of work fatigue. As with all new measures, additional research is required to evaluate fully the utility of the 3D-WFI in research on work fatigue.

Job demands, job resources and safety outcomes: The roles of emotional exhaustion and safety compliance

The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the job demands-resources (JD-R) model in explaining the relationship of job demands and resources with safety outcomes (i.e., workplace injuries and near-misses). We collected self-reported data from 670 crude oil production workers from three sub-companies of a major oilfield company in China. The results of a structural equation analysis indicated that job demands (psychological and physical demands) and job resources (decision latitude, supervisor support and coworker support) could affect emotional exhaustion and safety compliance, and thus influence the occurrence of injuries and near-misses. The implications of the present findings regarding both the JD-R model and occupational safety research were discussed.