This post is an abstract of my Master thesis about empowering leadership, well-being at work and burnout.
Introduction
Work is a big part of an individual’s life. Empirical studies show that people who work tend to have a better health than those who do not work. Work is therefore an essential element for the construction of personal identity. Work can also be the cause of occupational illnesses or ill-being at work. For several decades, new diseases connected to work have emerged, such as burnout.
Studying the health of employees is a double challenge, on the one hand for employees, and on the other hand for companies themselves. Not being healthy has an impact on individuals in the first place. Thus, improving professional well-being is essential for the employee’s psychological health, so that he or she feels good about his job. In return, poor health will influence organizations, leading to increased absenteeism and lower productivity. In the case of good mental health of the employees, it will be beneficial for the company to see its production continue or even increase. Therefore, this study will investigate the impact of different managerial practices on wellbeing at work and burnout.
Theory
Firstly, it is important to define the three important notions. The empowering leadership was especially developed by Ahearne, Mathieu and Rapp (2005). They define empowering leadership with four characteristics:
- Enhancing the meaningfulness of work
- Fostering participation in decision making
- Expressing confidence in high performance
- Providing autonomy from bureaucratic constraints
The burnout is mainly studied by Maslasch and Jackson in 1981 who developed a survey to make a diagnosis of the burnout. The burnout is the result of three dimensions:
- Emotional exhaustion: refers to the depletion of emotional resources when the individual has lost the ability to respond to the emotional demands of work.
- Depersonalization: where, individual develops impersonal, unpleasant attitudes, a form of cynicism in the relationship with others.
- Finally, there is a decrease of the personal accomplishment.
As for the well-being at work, there are many definitions, it is important to distinguish between the well-being in general and well-being at work. Grosjean, in 2004, defined well-being at work as subjective and that corresponds to the effects felt by the person.
Hypothesis
The aim of this study is to demonstrate that managerial practices can influence the well-being at work and burnout of the employee.
We made three hypothesis:
- Firstly, empowering leadership will increase the employee’s well-being at work
- Secondly, empowering leadership will decrease the chances of developing a burnout.
- Finally, well-being at work and burnout will be found to be negatively correlated
Method
Participants have completed three surveys: one on empowering leadership: the Leadership Empowerment Behavior (Yahia, Montani, & Courcy, 2017), a scale of well-being at work (Gilbert, Dagenais-Desmarais & Savoie, 2011), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (1981), as well as a social-demographic questionnaire (age, sex, year in the company, etc).
This study took place at the SDIS 44. The sample was composed of 122 professionals firemens and 88 administratives staff.
A total of 210 SDIS agents participated in this study (31.4 % women), with an average age of 54.5.
Results
The first two hypotheses have been confirmed: there is a negative correlation between empowering leadership and burnout, and a positive correlation between empowering leadership and well-being. Indeed, the empowering leadership allows a decrease of the chances of developing a burnout and increases well-being at work.
As far as the third hypothesis is concerned, results do not validate it. Indeed, the correlation is not significant. However, two of the three dimensions of burnout are significantly correlated with wellbeing at work: the emotional exhaustion is negatively correlated with wellbeing at work, and the personal accomplishment is positively correlated with wellbeing at work. Thus, this third hypothesis is partially validated.
Discussion
Therefore, the empowering leadership tends to decrease burnout and increase well-being. Furthermore, this study showed that men have higher burnout scores compared to women. On the other hand, young employees also showed higher burnout scores than older ones.
Finally, there are several limits: only 18.8 % of SDIS 44 staff responded to the survey. In addition, the questionnaire was not adapted to firemen, due to their special working conditions. Those facts limit the generalization of the results.
To conclude, this study highlights the impact of the manager on employees. Others factors are responsible of the well-being or ill-being at work, but the how to manage will influence the agents. Indeed, the empowering leadership seem to have a good characteristics for the employees are satisfied. This style of leadership allows the employee to feel recognized and satisfied in his work; to improve your well-being and to avoid suffering from burnout.
Keywords of the research : Burnout – empowering leadership – well-being at work
Words I have learned:
Empowerment: Autonomisation/Habilitation
Empowering leadership: leadership habilitant
Emotional exhaustion: Epuisement émotionnel
Well-being at work: Bien-être au travail
Confidence: Confiance