Managing Research: Job Demands Resources Model of Burnout

This research paper discusses the Job Demands Resources Model of Burnout and its impact on employees in human services industry. It also explores the relationship between changing technology and burnout, increased effort and lack of reward system, and workload among employees leading to burnout. The research design, sources of data, conceptualization and measurement, data collection method, and data analysis are also discussed.

Running head: MANAGING RESEARCH
Managing research
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Literature review
Job Demands Resources Model (JD-R) of Burnout
It has been observed that staff members related to human services industry such as
health care, social work and others, have high amount of individuals suffering from the
symptoms of burnout (Demerouti et al. 2001). The JD-R model suggests that job demand and
job resources are two main categories of working conditions that are distinctively connected
with particular outcomes. It has been specifically observed in the research conducted by
Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner and Schaufeli (2001) that, when job demands in an
organisation is high it results in increased amount of employee exhaustion whereas, high job
demands does not show any impact on employee engagement. On the other hand, the lack of
job resources impacts heavily upon employee engagement. Therefore, the findings of the
research proposes that increased job demands with decreased job resources results in burnout
among the staff members or employees of human services organisation.
Relationship between changing technology and burnout
It has been observed among the health industry professionals that the employee
turnover rate is comparatively high due to the increasing impact of burnout and fatigue
among health professionals. The staff members that are related with human services such as
aged care facility and others have comparatively higher amount of burnout rates than any
other profession (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). A number of factors contribute towards this
increasing rate of burnout among employees associated with human services such as long
period of working hours, lack of recognition and appreciation, learning new technologies and
so on. It has been observed that the advancement in technology and the rapid changes that are
seen in health care industry, training programmes have become an essential part that the
Human Resource Management adopts for sharpening the working skills of their employees

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(Benson and Dundis 2003). However, with the introduction of innovative technologies taking
over every industry, employees face difficulty in keeping up with these changes. It is even
observed that due to the increased pace of training programmes, employees’ adaptation rate
with the new technology and other factors effect on their mental and physical health leading
into burnout, depression, stress and other issues (Benson and Dundis 2003).
Increased amount of effort and lack of reward system
Considering other reasons behind the low rate of employee engagement in human
service related industry is imbalance between the high efforts put by the staff members of the
associated organisation and poor recognition or reward system executed by the Human
resource management (Edwards and Webster 2012). The amount of effort that the staff
members put in executing the assigned job roles are not met by the amount of recognition or
reward they are provided with by the management team. In addition to this, it has been
observed that the staff members that are related with human services have to deal with the
complaints and other issues from the patients or customers that show their dissatisfaction on
the health professionals such as nurses, doctors, and so on (Johnson et al. 2005). This further
increases the mental pressure of the employees and ultimately suffer from mental health
issues such as depression, stress, and others.
Workload among employees leading to burnout
It has been evident that extreme work pressure have been one of the most common
reasons behind excessive rate of burnout among employees related with human services
(Ducharme, Knudsen and Roman 2007). The long working hours and extensive number of
tasks assigned to each employees in such sectors of job drain out the staff members to a great
extent. In consequence of this, the staff members suffer from burnout that deprives them of
performing efficiently within the organisation. Even though, job demands are not specifically
negative in nature, it may often change into job stressors when in order to meet those

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demands employees need to put extra effort (Kubicek, Paškvan and Korunka 2015).
Henceforth, the lack of management’s arrangement regarding the allocation of job role may
result in excessive workload among employees that ultimately leads into burnout and stress.
Research design
Overall research design and justification
There are generally three essential research design associated with any research study
(Yin 2003). Descriptive or analytical, exploratory and the explanatory research design. For
this particular study, a descriptive research design is selected as it will help to gain a detailed
idea regarding the existing theories and concepts of employee burnout and the way they
effect upon the employees performance within an organisation.
Sources of data
Primary data sources are adopted for this particular research paper where the
participants will take part in a survey based questionnaire. The participants for this survey
would be mainly the staff members of the aged care facility. Since the aim of the paper is to
find out the sources of pressure and challenges they face in their job role as nurse, supervisors
and other departments. In addition to this, secondary data sources are adopted for
constructing the literature review of this paper.
Conceptualisation and measurement
A quantitative research is adopted for this specific study where a survey based method
shall be implemented for the collection of data and later on analysing them with quantitative
measurement methodology. The sources of pressure among the employees of aged care
facility shall be identified along with the level of exhaustion shall also be measured in
distinctive job roles.

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Data collection method
The data collection procedure for this study shall be survey based questions since the
research study aims in finding out the work pressure sources and challenges from a specific
set of group. In this case, these groups are the staff members of the aged care facility.
Data analysis
For the purpose of analysing the collected data from the survey, the collected data
shall be converted into numerical digits and percentages in order to gain the related elements
and drawing comparisons from the data collected (Gast and Ledford 2014). The data shall be
constructed in the form of charts and graphs for better representation. The information that
will be gathered from the survey shall be constructed determining the distinctive themes that
are related to the research topic.

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References
Benson, S.G. and Dundis, S.P., 2003. Understanding and motivating health care employees:
integrating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, training and technology. Journal of nursing
management, 11(5), pp.315-320.
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A.B., Nachreiner, F. and Schaufeli, W.B., 2001. The job demands-
resources model of burnout. Journal of Applied psychology, 86(3), p.499.
Ducharme, L.J., Knudsen, H.K. and Roman, P.M., 2007. Emotional exhaustion and turnover
intention in human service occupations: The protective role of coworker
support. Sociological Spectrum, 28(1), pp.81-104.
Edwards, J.A. and Webster, S., 2012. Psychosocial risk assessment: Measurement invariance
of the UK Health and Safety Executive's Management Standards Indicator Tool across public
and private sector organizations. Work & Stress, 26(2), pp.130-142.
Gast, D.L. and Ledford, J.R. eds., 2014. Single case research methodology: Applications in
special education and behavioral sciences. Routledge.
Johnson, S., Cooper, C., Cartwright, S., Donald, I., Taylor, P. and Millet, C., 2005. The
experience of work-related stress across occupations. Journal of managerial
psychology, 20(2), pp.178-187.
Kubicek, B., Paškvan, M. and Korunka, C., 2015. Development and validation of an
instrument for assessing job demands arising from accelerated change: The intensification of
job demands scale (IDS). European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 24(6),
pp.898-913.
Schaufeli, W.B. and Bakker, A.B., 2004. Job demands, job resources, and their relationship
with burnout and engagement: A multi‐sample study. Journal of Organizational Behavior:

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The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and
Behavior, 25(3), pp.293-315.
Yin, R.K., 2003. Case study research design and methods third edition. Applied social
research methods series, 5.