Perception of Healthy Organizational Practices of Workers in the Chilean Educational Sector and Impact on Their Levels of Engagement and Burnout

Abstract

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching was considered one of the most stressful occupations, one that could provoke burnout in workers. Continuing to provide educational services despite the pandemic and the new methodologies was a challenge for teachers that demonstrated their engagement in their work. This research, from the model of healthy and resilient organizations (HERO), aimed to assess the perception of healthy organizational practices (HOP) of teachers of an educational institution during the years 2020 and 2021 and the impact they have on their levels of engagement and burnout. Through the application of three instruments, 154 responses were obtained. The data were analyzed through correlations and mean comparisons. The main results show that in 2020, the correlations between HOP with engagement and burnout were positive and negative, respectively, as expected. In 2021, the perception of HOP decreased, as did teacher engagement, while burnout increased. In conclusion, the findings suggest that HOP can become a sustainable human resource management tool that promotes teachers’ mental health, even in challenging times.

Engagement and Burnout in Times of COVID-19: A Comparative Analysis Based on Healthy Organizational Practices

“…In general, these results support what has been established in the literature and previous research [11,28,[34][35][36][37][38]40,44,45,[82][83][84], which indicates that differences in workers' perception of organizational practices are associated with differences in well-being (or burnout) [85,86].…”

“…Specifically, municipal workers show small or non-existent correlations. These findings highlight the need for disaggregated analysis when working with different institutions within the same industry, as idiosyncratic differences can lead to erroneous results and intervention designs that overlook contextual variables [29,34,73,74].…”

“…Finally, it is necessary to point out that in order to ensure the sustainable performance of the organization, it is essential to generate a system of practices that encourage proactive and voluntary behaviors of workers in the face of sudden events arising from radical changes [99,100]. The above is reaffirmed by the research developed by Ganga et al [34], where the high perception of healthy organizational practices contributed to the well-being and good performance of employees in times of COVID-19.…”

“…Thus, it was decided to investigate burnout (as a variable of negative emotional state) and engagement (as a variable of positive emotional state) of the workers of these entities. These are two variables that have been used in previous research in this regard and context [28][29][30]34]. We also included (as an independent variable) the perception of workers' organizational practices, which represents the management carried out by organizations.…”