Abstract
Employee burnout can affect workers’ health, motivation, and job performance, and speed staff turnover. In law enforcement, burnout has been attributed to a variety of job-related, organizational, and personal factors, ranging from the danger inherent to the job to the liabilities of late shift work, tension with supervisors, and gender relations in the organization. Overlooked in almost all of these studies has been the place of civilians in police work, and how their burnout experiences differ from—or resemble—those of their sworn counterparts. This study is based on surveys of both sworn and civilian employees of 12 police agencies from across the United States. In the survey they described their extent of emotional exhaustion, and reported on features of their lives and work that have been hypothesized to magnify or minimize this stress reaction. The study found that the burnout process is a universal one, driven by virtually the same factors among both civilians and sworn officers. Difficulties balancing work and life responsibilities, the support they receive from coworkers and supervisors, the fairness of personnel policies, and several personal factors contributed to burnout levels. The implications of these findings for both research and practice are also explored.
Highlights
Burnout, defined as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, can affect a worker’s health, motivation, and job performance, while undermining the organization by speeding staff turnover (Burke & Richardsen, 1993; Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001)
The first goal of this study was to determine if there are significant differences in the level of burnout described by civilian employees and their sworn counterparts
A detailed examination of the burnout composite scale shows that the item probing feelings of being “used up” at the end of the day pointed to the most commonly occurring issue among both civilian employees (4.36) and sworn personnel (4.31)
Summary
Burnout, defined as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, can affect a worker’s health, motivation, and job performance, while undermining the organization by speeding staff turnover (Burke & Richardsen, 1993; Cordes & Dougherty, 1993; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Focusing on the dangers inherent in the profession, the litany of rules that constrain employees’ working lives, and their frequent and often fraught interaction with the general public, researchers have examined burnout in law enforcement work (e.g., Schaible & Gecas, 2010) All of these studies have focused just on sworn personnel, overlooking the experiences of their civilian counterparts. Wilson and McLaren (1972), for example, advocated hiring civilians to perform specialized upper management duties, including finance, personnel, and data processing They argued that assigning sworn police officers to clerical duties and other record-keeping functions undermined efficiency and economy. This approach helped spur the process of civilianization and would eventually develop into the Community Era of policing
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