Certificate Course in Business Psychology

Lesson 6

Employee Burnout, Boredom & Engagement

Mario Fonseka
FCMA(UK), CGMA (US), Dip. M (UK), FCMA(SL), MBA (USJ), Certified Psychometrician (BPS), MSc Bus. Psy (Coventry)
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 Employee Burnout
Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal
accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do ‘people work’ of some kind
(Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter, 1986)

✓ Emotional exhaustion: depletion or draining of emotional resources caused by

interpersonal demands

✓ Depersonalization: development of negative, callous, and cynical attitudes towards the

recipients of one’s services (not an impersonal view of self)

✓ Lack of personal accomplishment: tendency to evaluate one’s work with recipients

negatively

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 Employee Burnout
The 3 original burnout dimensions were redefined later as:

✓ Exhaustion: fatigue irrespective of its cause

✓ Cynicism: an indifferent or distant attitude towards work instead of other people

✓ Lack of professional efficacy: both social and non-social aspects of occupational

accomplishment

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Employee Burnout

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Assessing Employee Burnout,
• The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most widely used instrument to assess
employee burnout

• The MBI includes three sub scales reflecting the three dimensions
✓ Emotional exhaustion: “I feel emotionally drained by my work”
✓ Cynicism: “I doubt the significance of my work”
✓ Reduced professional efficacy: “I cannot effectively solve the problems that arise in my
work”

• The are three versions of the MBI:

✓ General version for every occupational context
✓ Specific version for human service professionals (eg. Doctors, Nurses, Counsellors etc)
✓ Specific version for Educators
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 Self Assessment

Are you Burnt out?

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 Employee Boredom
• Boredom is an unpleasant state of relatively low arousal and dissatisfaction, which is attributed to an
inadequately stimulating work situation

• The DUtch Boredom Scale (DUBS) developed by Prof. Wilmar Schaufeli, is used to assess the level of
Boredom at work. Score the following Qs as follows:
Never (0), Almost never (1), Rarely (2), Sometimes (3), Often (4), Very Often (5), Always (6)
1. At work, time goes by very slowly ____ Scale
2. I feel bored at my work place ____ (0%) (25%) (50%) (75%) (100%)

3. At work I spend my time aimlessly ____

4. At my job, I feel restless ____ 0 12 24 36 48

5. During work time I daydream ____

6. It seems as if my working day never ends ____
7. I tend to do other things during my work ____
8. At my workplace, there is not much to do ____ Total ____
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Boredom, Engagement & Commitment

Source: Van Wyk, S.M., De Beer, L.T., Pienaar, J., & Schaufeli, W.B. (2016)

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Employee Engagement
Engagement is a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor,
dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002)
✓ Vigor: Refers to a high level of energy and mental resilience while working. It’s a
willingness to invest effort in one’s work and persistence even in the face of difficulties
✓ Dedication: involves being strongly involved in one’s work. Its experiencing a sense of
significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge
✓ Absorption: Its focused attention. It’s about fully concentrating in one’s work and being
happily engrossed in one’s work, whereby time passes quickly and one has difficulties
detaching oneself from their work
As per research some of the most engaged professions include
business executives, managers, artists, farmers, and teachers,
while some of the least engaged professions include blue-collar
workers, police officers, retail workers, and homecare staff
 Employee Engagement
This model assumes that all human emotions may be plotted
on the surface of a circle that is defined by two orthogonal
dimensions that run from ‘pleasure’ to ‘displeasure’ and
from ‘activation’ to ‘deactivation’

Each and every emotion is a combination of varying Workaholic Engaged

degrees of pleasure and activation

Employees who experience mainly negative emotions Bored

may suffer from burnout, boredom or workaholism Burnt-out Satisfied

Employees who experience mainly positive emotions may

feel satisfied or engaged

The intensity of the experience increases when moving from

the center to the surface of the circle along both diagonals Affect Circumplex Model or Circumplex Model
Mario Fonseka of Emotions (Russell, 1980)
Workaholism
• Workaholism is a negative state that is defined as strong inner drive to work excessively
hard (Taris, Schaufeli, & Shimazu, 2010)
• Workaholics have the compulsive drive to work incessantly and therefore tend to allocate
an exceptional amount of time to work – By doing so, they neglect other life domains
(leisure, family)
• Their obsession with work motivates them to be very active, but at the same time,
workaholics do not enjoy their work (Ng, Sorensen, & Feldman, 2007)

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 Self Assessment

How ‘engaged’ are you at work?

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Job Demands-Resources Model (2004)

Source: The original JD-R Model By Schaufeli and Bakker (2004)

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 JD-R Model of
Work Engagement (2008)

Source: Bakker & Demerouti’s JD-R model of Work Engagement (2008)

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JD-R theory based interventions

Job Redesign Training

Job Crafting Strengths based

Source: Bakker & Demerouti (2014) Mario Fonseka

Job Crafting
Model

Source: Tim and Bakker (2010) Mario Fonseka

 Overcoming Disruptive Work Behaviour
▪ Education and Communication

▪ Participation and Involvement

▪ Facilitation and Support

▪ Negotiation

▪ Manipulation

▪ Coercion
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The Dark Triad
of Personality traits

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 The ‘Dark Triad’ Personality traits
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Read more @ https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Motivation_and_emotion/Book/2020/Dark_triad_personality_and_emotion

The ‘Dark Triad’ Characteristics
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 The ‘Dark Triad’ Personality traits Quiz

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 OrganIsatIonal
Psychopaths

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Organisational Psychopaths

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Organisational Psychopaths
• Psychopaths are those people representing about 1 % of the population who have no
conscience and who demonstrate a predatory and parasitic approach to life
• Corporate psychopaths are therefore simply those psychopaths who exist successfully in
society and work within organisations. They are conceptualised as highly career oriented
but ruthless, unethical and exploitative employees
• Estimations are that while about 1 % of junior employees and as much 3.5 % at senior
managers can demonstrate signs of being a corporate psychopath.
• Many of psychopaths’ defining characteristics - their polish, charm, cool
decisiveness, and fondness for the fast lane - are easily, and often,
mistaken for leadership qualities. However, along with their charisma
come the destructive traits: they’re cunning, manipulative, untrustworthy,
unethical, parasitic, and utterly remorseless. There’s nothing they won’t
do, and no one they won’t exploit, to get what they want
 Video

Corporate Psychopaths
 Characteristics of Corporate Psychopaths
• Manipulative
• Superficial charm
• Lack of remorse for one’s actions
• Self-centered
• Callous
• Pathological lying
• Egotistical
• Devious
• Lack of ‘EMPATHY’
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 Virtuous Leadership: Performance & Trust
Ideal Leader Simon Sinek argues that ‘performance’ without
‘trust’, will only create ‘toxic leaders’ eg.) Elite Navy
X Seals
X
Performance

While it would be ideal to have high ‘performance’

Toxic Leader X with coupled with high levels, of ‘trustworthiness’,
if a trade-off has to be made, it is better to have a
Practically ‘better’ leader who shows moderate to high level of
Leader
performance accompanied by a high level of ‘trust

Trust

Mario Fonseka Simon Sinek

 Virtuous Leaders
• Demonstrate ‘EMPATHY’

• Puts others’ needs FIRST, over one’s own needs

• Owns up to one’s mistakes; Does not try to cover up or pass blame to others

Read more about Jim Senegal’s leadership style @

https://centennialinc.com/centennial-blog/winning-at-retention-a-case-study-to-model/
Jim Sinegal
http://mastersinvest.com/newblog/2019/7/5/learning-from-costcos-jim-sinegal
Co-Founder/Director
CEO (1985 - 2012)
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