Understanding How Personality Impacts Exhaustion and Engagement: The Role of Job Demands, and Job and Personal Resources as Mediators

Abstract

Objective: Direct relationships have been found between neuroticism and burnout and between extraversion, conscientiousness, and engagement, key concepts in occupational wellbeing. This study aimed to explore the direct and indirect relationships between neuroticism and exhaustion, the core component of burnout, and between extraversion, conscientiousness, and engagement. Job demands, job resources, and psychological flexibility, a personal resource, were explored as potential mediators. Method: Participants completed an online questionnaire at two time points, 1 year apart. Participants were studying nursing, social work, psychology, or occupational therapy at time one (T1) and either studying (n = 18) or working (n = 81) at time two (T2), with no employment information for one participant. At T2 working participants were nurses (n = 36), psychologists (n = 14), occupational therapists (n = 13), social workers (n = 7), other health profession workers (n = 7), and non-health profession workers (n = 4). At T2 the average age of participants was 31 (standard deviation: 9.52; range: 21-60) and 92% were female. Results: The direct relationships between T1 neuroticism and T2 exhaustion, and T1 conscientiousness and T2 engagement were not significant when controlling for the outcome variables at T1, exhaustion and engagement, respectively. Multiple mediation and bootstrapping analyses indicated potential mediation relationships between T1 neuroticism and T2 exhaustion and between T1 extraversion and T2 engagement. Conclusion: While personality appears to be important in understanding burnout and engagement, the role of mediation suggests a complex relationship. Further longitudinal and large sample studies are needed to better understand the mechanisms by which personality impacts burnout and engagement. What is already known on this topic1 Health professionals and students are at risk for burnout, which is linked to depression and poor physical health. Overall, engagement is linked to increased work performance and wellbeing. 2 Personality factors such as neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness have been found to be related to both burnout and engagement. 3 The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model is an evidencebased model explaining burnout and engagement and suggests that job demands and job and personal resources predict burnout and engagement. What this paper adds1 Longitudinal studies of the relationships between personality and burnout and engagement have found less consistent results than cross-sectional studies. This study found that when measured longitudinally, and when controlling for time one exhaustion, neuroticism no longer predicted time two exhaustion. 2 This study considered that personality may impact burnout and engagement by leading to differences in job demands and job and personal resources and is the first to explore job demands, job resources and personal resources as mediators between exhaustion and neuroticism, and extraversion, conscientiousness, and engagement. 3 Potential mediation ...

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