Work conditions and burnout: an exploratory study among Hungarian workers in family and child welfare, child protection and pedagogical professional services

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study focuses on the relationship between professional working conditions and burnout among Hungarian social and pedagogical professionals. The novelty of our research is that in addition to the role of mainstream work and organisational factors studies, it points out the roles of conflicts of interaction and cooperation with clients, management of cultural distance and differences, and challenges of fieldwork in the occurrence of burnout measured by an individualised scale. Two hundred and sixty-one professionals participated in our cross-sectional questionnaire survey; the data were analysed by factor analysis and multinomial logistic regression. Adjusted for work field and age, the results showed that the challenges related to clients and fieldwork, as well as job and task fitting problems played a significant role in emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation of social and pedagogical workers. In addition to that, the deficiencies related to work-motivation are positively associated with the reduced personal accomplishment of professionals. The empirical results suggest that in order to prevent the burnout of professionals, it is essential not only to create organisational motivating conditions for work, but also to prepare them for the substantive parts of work, real life situations, the associated expectations for their role and conflicts management, and provide on-going professional support.