Abstract
The present study sheds light on social workers’ working conditions in highly demanding settings and examines the associations between their perceived job demands, resources, resilience, personal burnout, and work engagement. A cross-sectional quantitative online survey was conducted with employees in social work institutions of independent and public sponsors providing help for refugees and homeless persons. The study participants were 243 social workers (68.8% female and 31.3% male) from four federal states in Germany. Correlations between social workers’ job demands, resources, burnout, and work engagement were confirmed in accordance with the Job Demands–Resources model. Results of the structural equation modelling revealed significant positive effects of employees’ job demands on their personal burnout, but no significant effects on their work engagement. The meaning of work as a job resource was significantly positively related to work engagement and negatively related to burnout. Although resilience did not moderate the relationship between employees’ job demands and burnout, it had a significant negative effect on burnout and a positive effect on work engagement. The results indicate a need for the development of health promotion measures for social workers in homeless and refugee aid. Structural approaches should target the reduction of employees’ job demands to diminish their potentially health-depleting effects. Of equal importance, behavioural measures should foster employees’ meaning of work and resilience, since both resources showed beneficial effects on their work engagement and were negatively related to burnout.
Highlights
Social workers offer support and counselling for various groups of clients with regard to the prevention, reduction, and coping with social problems
The study was designed as a cross-sectional online survey for social workers in four federal states located in the north/northeast of Germany (Hamburg, Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania)
The majority of the participants were qualified as social workers (62.2%)
Summary
Social workers offer support and counselling for various groups of clients with regard to the prevention, reduction, and coping with social problems. Their tasks mainly involve person-related services, such as consultancy, education, training, and representation [1]. Two increasingly important areas of social work are refugee and homeless aid. The growing number of people being forcibly displaced represents a social problem with a worldwide scope. There are currently 25.9 million refugees worldwide [2]. It is estimated that about 100 million
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