Antecedents and consequences of job burnout and work engagement among junior management supervisors of Indian Railways

Abstract

Indian Railways is one of the largest organizations in the world with respect to the number of people it directly employs. The organization plays a very big role in the economy of India and touches its whole population in extremely important ways. Maintenance of Diesel Locomotives is an important exercise in Indian Railways and is carried out at several Diesel Locomotive Sheds all over the Country. This maintenance activity is directly supervised by Junior Engineers and Senior Section Engineers who are also known as Supervisors. These Supervisors form the first layer of management of the techno-managerial affairs of Diesel Sheds and therefore are the very important junior management layer of Indian Railways. For better productivity of the complete Indian Railways, it is important to ensure that these Supervisors do not suffer from Job Burnout and its negative consequences and exhibit high Work Engagement and its positive effects.464 Supervisors (299 Senior Section Engineers and 154 Junior Engineers) of sixteen Diesel Sheds of Indian Railways were surveyed using standardised instruments for testing proposed facets of Job Demands, Job Resources, Job Burnout, Work Engagement, Psychosomatic conditions, and Positive Organizational Consequences of Work Engagement like Self Efficacy, Job Satisfaction and Affective Organizational Commitment. Data was also collected for identifying demographic differences among supervisors. Statistical tests were done within the framework of a model derived from the Job Demand-Resources model of Job Burnout on this data to arrive at findings. The major findings of this Research were that high Emotional Demands, Cognitive Demands and Work and Family Conflict were associated with high Job Burnout which was further associated with negative psychosomatic symptoms like Sleep trouble, Stress, Depression and Mental Fatigue. Many Job Resources were associated with high Work Engagement and some like Opportunities for Development acted as buffers for Job Burnout. Work Engagement, especially Dedication, was associated positively with Self Efficacy, Job Satisfaction and Affective Organizational Commitment. The oldest (by age) one-third of the Supervisors suffered the least burnout and showed higher Work Engagement than the others. There was largely no significant effect of Education, Father s Occupation and Size of Population Centre where the supervisor had grown up as a child, on Job Burnout and Work Engagement.