The impact of technostress on workplace engagement and employee burnout

Abstract

In 2020, because of the global health pandemic, many businesses were prompted to accelerate their transformative journeys. Agile organisations were able to recover quickly by adopting alternative methods of employment, such as remote work, that may have enhanced the engagement levels of their employees. Other businesses implemented novel technological developments or increased job demands, which could have led to technostress, or burnout. This theme of uncertainty observed in the last three years motivated the development of this dissertation which aims to explore the link between the three constructs: technostress, burnout, and engagement. 249 responses were included in this research project that made use of three tools: • The burnout construct was assessed by the BAT-12 version 2; • The technostress construct was measured by the technostress creator’s scale; and • The engagement construct was analysed by the UWES-9. Both descriptive as well as inferential statistics were used to analyse the results. The non-parametrical Mann-Whitney test was employed, as well as the Spearman correlation and the Kruskal-Wallis test. The data indicated that technostress and burnout correlate positively, and the more technostress one experiences, the higher the likelihood is for burnout to arise. Another finding confirmed the ‘’dual unity’’ connection between burnout engagement, highlighting that they are negatively correlated. The study also indicated that remote work impacts technostress and engagement significantly, while burnout may indirectly be impacted through its positive association with technostress. The three constructs may also be influenced by different demographics in a diverse manner, as detailed in the following pages. Before concluding this dissertation, recommendations for future research and the adoption of strategic long-term nationwide policies are also being discussed.