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Abstract
Extensive evidence indicates that burnout can have detrimental consequences for individuals as well as organizations; therefore, there is a great need for burnout prevention. While burnout prevention interventions initiated by the employer have previously been studied, the proactive behaviors employees deploy themselves to prevent burnout have received less research attention. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative interview study was to enhance our understanding of the self-initiated actions employees undertake to prevent burnout, using the model of proactive motivation and conservation of resources theory as theoretical frameworks. Findings indicated that most participants reported to engage in specific kinds of proactive burnout prevention behaviors. The reported self-initiated proactive actions were aimed at maintaining and/or increasing resources and/or reducing demands in the work, home, and personal domain. The study contributes to the literature by linking the proactive motivation process to the prevention of burnout and by focusing on both work and non-work factors. Results of this study can be used in further research into the (effectiveness of) employees’ proactive burnout prevention behaviors and serve as a starting point for developing interventions aimed at enhancing proactive burnout prevention.
Highlights
Employee burnout is a topic of major interest and concern, given its high costs to both organizations and the individual employee [1,2,3]
Most participants in this study indicated to engage in proactive burnout prevention behaviors
Proactive burnout prevention shares some similarities with job crafting [62], and previous research has found proactive work behavior, such as job crafting and voice to be associated with lower levels of burnout [22,42]. Findings of this exploratory qualitative study showed that the interviewed employees engage in specific kinds of proactive behaviors to prevent burnout
Summary
Employee burnout is a topic of major interest and concern, given its high costs to both organizations and the individual employee [1,2,3]. The need to prevent burnout appears from numerous research findings showing that burnout has a negative impact on individuals’ physical health (e.g., prolonged fatigue, coronary heart disease, gastrointestinal issues) and psychological wellbeing (e.g., depression, insomnia), and is negatively associated with different work-related outcomes (e.g., lowered job performance, low organizational commitment) [1,2,4,5,6]. Burnout has recently been defined as a work-related condition consisting of exhaustion, loss of control over emotional and cognitive processes, and mental distancing [7]. These key symptoms may be complemented by secondary symptoms, such as feelings of depression, and behavioral and psychosomatic complaints of strain [8]. While these studies indicate the actions organizations can take to prevent or reduce burnout risks, the actions that employees can take have received little attention [12]
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