Work engagement has become a hot issue in recent years among human services. However, unlike the concept of work burnout, work engagement has rarely been studied in the academic literature and relatively little is known about its antecedents and conse...
Work engagement has become a hot issue in recent years among human services. However, unlike the concept of work burnout, work engagement has rarely been studied in the academic literature and relatively little is known about its antecedents and consequences in nursing. The purpose of this study is to understand about not only work engagement but also work burnout and research about the factors that affect on both concepts, when nurses work in a hospital. What's more this study examines the relationship between work engagement and work burnout.
For this purpose, the researcher sampled 400 nurses working for eight general hospitals in Seoul and Gyeong-gi do for a questionnaire survey, and 342nurses responded to the survey. The data were collected through the questionnaire survey from January 22 through March 3, 2010.
The tools used for this study were the scales about Work Engagement, Work Burnout, Job Characteristics, Customer-related Social Stressor, Surface Acting & Deep Acting of Emotional labor. The data collected were processed using SPSS Window 16.0 Program for actual number and percentage, different to a dependent variable of general characteristics, means, standard deviation, correlation coefficients and stepwise multiple regression analysis.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
1) Work Engagement for nurses scored 4.37 on average, and its factor affecting Work Engagement most was Job Characteristics (4.83), Deep Acting of Emotional Labor (4.70), Customer-related Social Stressor (4.99). Also, Work Burnout scored 4.41 on average, and its factor affecting Work Engagement most was Customer-related Social Stressor (4.99), Job Characteristics (4.83), Surface Acting of Emotional Labor (4.70).
2) Estimated regression model of Work Engagement of nurses showed significant value (F=87.660, p<.001). Major factors which affect Work Engagement of nurses were observed as Job Characteristics(β=.46), Deep Acting of Emotional Labor(β=.33), turnover intention(β=-.16), job experiences(β=.11), Customer-related Social Stressor(β=-.09), which explained 56.0% of Work Engagement of nurse.
3) Estimated regression model of Burnout of nurses showed significant value (F=48.669, p<.001). Major factors which affect burnout of nurses were observed as Customer-related Social Stressor(β=.39), turnover intention(β=.26), job experiences(β=-.20), Job Characteristics(β=-.16), Surface Acting of Emotional Labor(β=.11), which explained 41.1% of Burnout of nurse.
These results demonstrate convincingly that factors which effect of Work Engagement and Work Burnout work in the opposite direction each other. To be specific, factors of Job Characteristics and job experiences influence on Work Engagement positively but Work Burnout negatively. On the other hand, factors of Customer-related Social Stressor and turnover intention effect on Work Engagement negatively but Work Burnout positively.
In addition, it was confirmed that the consequences of emotional labor depends on employees’ strategic action on emotional labor. In detail, the deep acting which is engaged in active emotional regulation is related to Work Engagement, whereas the surface acting which is engaged in passive emotional regulation is connected with Work Burnout. Emotional labor strategy had a significant role in attitude such as Work Engagement and Work Burnout in work. Finally, the implications and limitations were discussed.