EMPLOYEE BURNOUT has become a global concern. In a survey of over 1,000 respondents by Deloitte, 77 per cent said they had experienced burnout at their current job, while a whopping 91 per cent said unmanageable stress or frustration impacts the quality of their work. When stress begins to accumulate, people can find themselves in a state of feeling emotionally worn out and drained.
Work-related emotional exhaustion (EE) can be defined as ‘the experience of feeling emotionally over-extended and exhausted by one’s work.’ And not surprisingly, it has negative implications for employee well-being and effectiveness. In this article I will summarize recent research conducted with Faith Lee (University of Akron), James Diefendorff (University of Akron) and Megan Nolan (West Chester University). In this work we studied how EE changes throughout the workday and what can be done to address it.
How Resources Affect Employees
Accomplishing organizational goals requires people to exert physical, cognitive and emotional effort — i.e., resources — to meet work demands, overcome obstacles and show persistence in the face of stressors. To date, research has approached EE through the lens of resource-based theories such as ’s COR Theory, which defines resources as ‘valued objects, personal characteristics or energies.’ According to COR, employees have a fundamental desire to preserve the resources they have and to gain new ones, as well as to invest their resources to protect from future resource losses. Thus, resource consumption is a defining
