The home care work environment’s relationships with work engagement and burnout: A cross‐sectional multi‐centre study in Switzerland

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the levels of burnout and work engagement among home care workers in Switzerland and to test their association with job demands and job resources. We conducted a multi-centre, cross-sectional survey in the Germanspeaking part of Switzerland with a convenience sample of seven home care agencies. Data were collected between September 2017 and January 2018. We assessed burnout with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and work engagement with the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) as well as job demands (overtime, workfamily conflicts, experienced aggression and work stressors) and job resources (predictability, staffing, teamwork, leadership, collaboration, social support, sense of community, feedback). To investigate the levels of burnout and work engagement, we applied descriptive statistics. Based on Bakker and colleagues' Job Demands-Resources model, we used a path analysis to test the associations of job demands and job resources with burnout and work engagement. We analysed data from 448 home care workers (response rate 61.8%, mean age 44 years (SD 13.2), 96% female). The frequency of burnout in our sample was low, while that of work engagement was high. Job demands correlated positively with emotional exhaustion (β = .54, p < .001) and negatively with work engagement (β = −.25, p < .001). Job resources correlated negatively with emotional exhaustion (β = −.28, p < .001) and positively with work engagement (β = .41, p < .001). Work-family conflicts and work stressors correlated strongest with emotional exhaustion, whereas social support and feedback were found to correlate strongest with work engagement. Improvements to the home care work environment might enhance work engagement and reduce burnout. Corrective interventions could focus on reducing specific aspects of job demands, such as workfamily conflicts and work stressors, as well as on increasing aspects of job resources, especially social support and feedback.

Burnout and intention to leave among care workers in residential care homes in Hong Kong: Technology acceptance as a moderator

“…This result is also consistent with previous studies indicating that technology use is associated with diverse types of work demands (Knani et al, 2018;Stich et al, 2015). Care work is a human-oriented occupation and emphasizes intensive interpersonal interactions with residents and the provision of person-centred care, which are highly physically and emotionally demanding and prone to burnout (Mockli et al, 2020). Within this context, the deployment of health technology (video gaming in particular) for residents in long-term care settings can, to some extent, mitigate the demanding aspects of work through reducing residents' dependency on caring, which might further buffer intention to withdraw from work.…”

“…Working in residential homes for older adults is labour-intensive and emotionally demanding. It is distinguished from working in other healthcare settings by the multifaceted health problems of residents, frequent interaction with residents and their families, comprehensive person-centred care, extended length of care required and high mortality rate of residents (Cooper et al, 2016;Mockli et al, 2020). In Hong Kong, each nurse or healthcare worker in a residential home needs to care for an average number of 60 residents (Social Welfare Department of Hong Kong SAR, 2020).…”

Determinants of violence towards care workers working in the home setting: A systematic review

“…The mean working hours per week in three studies was 24.5 h per week 6,28,39 . Among the five studies which reported the proportion of study participants who had full‐time or part‐time jobs, less than half of the participants had full‐time jobs in three studies 11,41,47 …”

“…The education level of the study participants was reported in eleven studies. More than half of the participants completed high school or less in five studies, 16,35,39,43,45 and more than 70% of the participants attained college or higher education in another five studies 11,42,44,46,47 . The remaining study reported that 64% of study participants held home care certificates 6 .…”

“…The association between race and violence was not significant in the studies by Byon et al 16 , 38 and Karlsson et al 36 When the workers' task involved handling or transfer of clients, they experienced more assaults in the Galinsky et al's 28 and Karlsson et al's 36 studies. In Mockli et al's 47 study, care workers who had work stress and work‐family conflicts were prone to face aggression in the workplace.…”