The Paradoxical Relationship between Employee Burnout and Voice on Well-Being

Abstract

Employee burnout is a longstanding and ubiquitous problem facing organizations, and it has only grown more severe since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critically, organizational leaders will only be able to address issues surrounding burnout and employee well-being when employees are willing to honestly share their well-being concerns. However, we argue that a paradoxical relationship between employee burnout and voice exists. On the one hand, we propose that burnout is positively related to how important employees believe well-being issues are at work (issue importance), which positively relates to voice on well-being. By contrast, we argue that burnout is negatively related to employees' belief that their voice will influence others (voice instrumentality), which enhances voice on well-being. As such, those employees who want to speak up about well-being cannot, and those who can do not. We find support for these mixed effects of burnout across two field studies, including a pre-registered Study 2 with time-separated data that accounts for many potential confounds. We discuss the implications of our findings and propose a set of practical interventions that may encourage both employees who are burned out, and those who are not, to voice on well-being.