Job Stress and Burnout among Social Workers in the VUCA World of COVID-19 Pandemic

Exploring Social Work Practitioners' Perspectives on the Contributors to Burnout since the COVID-19 Pandemic

Burnout has a historic and disproportionate impact on social workers and is one important contributor to the ongoing health and behavioral health workforce crisis in the United States. Little is known, however, about social workers' experiences of burnout and their perceptions of factors that contribute to burnout since the COVID-19 pandemic. This study sought to explore this by answering the following research questions: (a) To what extent are social workers in South Carolina experiencing burnout? and (b) What do South Carolina social workers view as the top reasons for burnout in their professional role? Seventy social work practitioners and leaders from South Carolina completed an online survey during Fall 2022 that included the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and an open-ended question focused on identifying their perceptions of the top three reasons for burnout in the profession. Findings suggest that social workers in this study are experiencing moderate levels of burnout since the COVID-19 pandemic and report primarily organizational (83 percent) contributors to burnout. They also identified individual (36 percent), systemic (29 percent), and interpersonal (27 percent) contributors to burnout. Implications are discussed related to policy and practice responses to prevent and address burnout among social workers.

COVID-19's impact on worker stress in human service organizations: The mediating role of inclusion

Human service organizations faced extraordinary challenges due to COVID-19. Despite the increasing interest and research in this new scenario, there has been limited discussion about the impact of COVID-19 on workers, the challenges they faced, and the resulting stress. This study aimed to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on work-related stress and the mediating role of inclusion among workers in human service organizations in Chile during the pandemic. The research design was quantitative and involved a sample of 173 workers from civil society organizations who were contacted during the pandemic. The study confirmed that individuals most affected by the pandemic experienced higher levels of work-related stress, and that inclusion played a negative mediating role in this relationship. This article highlights the importance of relationships, decision-making processes, and access to information in reducing stress in post-COVID scenarios for organizations that traditionally handle crises.

Risk Perception and Public Pandemic Fatigue: The Role of Perceived Stress and Preventive Coping

Purpose

This study explores the status of pandemic fatigue, predictors, and their mechanisms of action based on a stress-response framework and a parallel model of future-oriented response.

Patients and methods

Study 1 investigated 8426 Chinese adult residents' understanding of and willingness to cooperate with the pandemic prevention and control policies and Study 2 surveyed 1635 Chinese residents on their activeness of pandemic prevention and control (APPC), pandemic risk perception, perceived stress, and future-oriented coping.

Results

Study 1 found that public understanding of and willingness to cooperate with prevention policies were significantly lower in 2022 than in 2020 and 2021. Study 2 found that risk perception negatively predicted the APPC; perceived stress and preventive coping significantly mediated the relationship between risk perception and APPC; but perceived stress and proactive coping did not significantly mediate the relationship between risk perception and APPC.

Conclusion

This revealed an increase in public fatigue in the third year of the pandemic. Pandemic fatigue can be predicted by pandemic risk perception, but the direct pathway of action is not significant and requires the mediation of perceived stress and preventive coping.

Best Practices for Technology in Clinical Social Work and Mental Health Professions to Promote Well-being and Prevent Fatigue

The shift to communication technologies during the pandemic has had positive and negative effects on clinical social worker practice. Best practices are identified for clinical social workers to maintain emotional well-being, prevent fatigue, and avoid burnout when using technology. A scoping review from 2000 to 21 of 15 databases focused on communication technologies for mental health care within four areas: (1) behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physical impact; (2) individual, clinic, hospital, and system/organizational levels; (3) well-being, burnout, and stress; and (4) clinician technology perceptions. Out of 4795 potential literature references, full text review of 201 papers revealed 37 were related to technology impact on engagement, therapeutic alliance, fatigue and well-being. Studies assessed behavioral (67.5%), emotional (43.2%), cognitive (57.8%), and physical (10.8%) impact at the individual (78.4%), clinic (54.1%), hospital (37.8%) and system/organizational (45.9%) levels. Participants were clinicians, social workers, psychologists, and other providers. Clinicians can build a therapeutic alliance via video, but this requires additional skill, effort, and monitoring. Use of video and electronic health records were associated with clinician physical and emotional problems due to barriers, effort, cognitive demands, and additional workflow steps. Studies also found high user ratings on data quality, accuracy, and processing, but low satisfaction with clerical tasks, effort required and interruptions. Studies have overlooked the impact of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion related to technology, fatigue and well-being, for the populations served and the clinicians providing care. Clinical social workers and health care systems must evaluate the impact of technology in order to support well-being and prevent workload burden, fatigue, and burnout. Multi-level evaluation and clinical, human factor, training/professional development and administrative best practices are suggested.

Job stress and burnout among ideological and political education teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic: A moderated mediation model

Job burnout among ideological and political education (IPE) teachers in China is a complex problem and rewarding area of research. This study explored the relationship between job stress and burnout among ideological and political education (IPE) teachers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The cross-sectional design included a sample of self-report measures sampled from 362 university IPE teachers. Using multiple line regression analysis, our main findings were as follows: first, job stress had a significant predictive effect on work-family conflict and job burnout; second, work-family conflict mediated the relationship between job stress and job burnout; and finally, resilience productively moderated the relationships between job stress and both work-family conflict and burnout. These results suggest that resilient IPE teachers are less likely to suffer from burnout. They indicate the need to systematically foster resilience in trainees and experienced instructors as a means of coping with adverse work conditions.

Role of agile leadership in managing inter-role conflicts for a satisfying job and life during COVID-19 in a VUCA world

This study investigated how agile leadership played its role in managing inter-role conflicts during the chaotic period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic was much more than the survival of the fittest and coming out of it alive. Organizations were under immense pressure to resume their normal operations in not-so-normal situations. This period of turmoil and agony brought a broad array of inter-role conflicts, which posed challenges for leaders to manage them effectively. The satisfaction at job and the satisfaction in life were the two most important endeavors for the employees to fight. This study explores how leadership agility helped employees manage their work–family and family–work conflicts, consequently impacting life satisfaction and job satisfaction simultaneously. Moreover, role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload are important intervening role stress factors that impact inter-role conflict management. So, role stress is a moderating factor in the direct relationship between agile leadership and inter-role conflict. This is a two-phased time lag study with a quantitative design for data collection. The first phase of data collection comprises of analyzing the impact of agile leadership on inter-role conflict management, keeping in view the intervening impact of role stress. The second data collection phase examines how inter-role conflicts impacted life satisfaction and job satisfaction during COVID-19. The data were collected from faculty working in higher education institutions in Pakistan, as the education industry was the second major sector that was affected because of COVID-19 after the health care industry. This research found that agile leadership plays a significant role in determining job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Agile leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to manage work–family (AgileL -> WFC -> JS β = 0.1020, p = 0.0112 and AgileL -> WFC -> LS β = 0.1361, p = 0.0014) and family–work conflicts (AgileL -> FWC -> JS β = 0.1598, p = 0.0017 and AgileL -> FWC -> LS β = 0.1160, p = 0.0093) and reduce role stress. Future researchers might include marital satisfaction, as the inter-role conflicts highly impacted marital satisfaction and resultant imbalances among dual-earning couples. Comparative studies in this regard, explaining how dual-earning couples managed to sustain marital health and the role of leadership in developed and developing countries would be enlightening.

Agile Leadership and Perceived Career Success: The Mediating Role of Job Embeddedness

Agile leadership is an important managerial function in which responsiveness and innovation appear to be essential elements for the long-term development and success of any business. The world has become increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) during and post COVID-19. Managers are required to possess agile leadership to facilitate their employees’ successful careers. Therefore, this study aims to find out the relationship between agile leadership and career success by examining the mediation of job embeddedness in healthcare organizations. The descriptive research design and survey method were employed in this study. The data were collected by using three scales from healthcare employees in healthcare organizations in Turkey. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The data were analysed by using SPSS and AMOS programs. The findings of this study showed that agile leadership behaviours enhance career success. Moreover, the relationship between agile leadership and career success is mediated by job embeddedness. The role of agile leadership in promoting employees’ career success has rarely been studied in the literature. This is one of the first studies to examine the effect of agile leadership on career success along with the mediating role of job embeddedness. Healthcare managers have faced many critical challenges at their workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the lens of managing efficient healthcare organizations in many contexts, this research sheds some important light on the association between agile leadership, career success, and job embeddedness. Managers with high agility levels used strategies such as group decision making, problem solving, effective internal and external communication, and adaptation to uncertain environment in order to increase their career success.

The Role of Supervision in Preventing Burnout among Professionals Working with People in Difficulty

The value of people in their various dimensions is a priority in the postmodern era. In this respect, programs are being implemented for disadvantaged social categories to compensate for differences, reduce discrepancies, and integrate marginalized people into society. This, however, is not easy, and the work of professionals with people in difficulty is frequently difficult, consuming multiple resources and, sometimes, leading to burnout. The professions involved in the recovery work of people in difficulty provide social, medical, psychological, and spiritual assistance services in order to restore or increase the well-being of disadvantaged people or social groups. This study presents an analysis of burnout among social workers and clerics and the effect of supervision on burnout. In support of this, a sociological survey (n = 502) was conducted on a convenience sample of Romanian social workers and clerics in June 2018. The main conclusion of the study is that supervising professionals working with people in difficulty significantly reduces the risk of burnout.