Professional working conditions, burnout and mobility among social and developmental professionals

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the correlation between professional working conditions, burnout and mobility intention among professionals working in the social field. It seeks answers to how organizational and work factors relate to burnout and intentions to quit a job, institution, or profession. It is known that those working in the helping professions are highly exposed to the risk of stress and thus burnout, which increases turnover intention and, ultimately, departure from the profession. It is also well known that all this is closely related to working conditions. While professional well-being and burnout related to it, as well as fluctuation and leaving the profession, have been widely researched abroad in helping occupations - primarily health care workers - no such research has been conducted among social work professionals in Hungary so far. Furthermore, the novelty of our research is that, in addition to the importance of the work factors revealed by previous studies, it points to the direct and indirect effects of client- and fieldwork-related difficulties on burnout and turnover intention. Our cross-sectional, exploratory study was conducted in 2019 by interviewing 261 social and developmental specialists from Baranya County. The most important results of our research revealed during the path analysis were: 1) the difficulties of fieldwork, the problems of the  job and task fit and the inadequate working and motivational conditions both directly and indirectly - by increasing the degree of certain burnout symptoms - affect the mobility intention; 2) the difficulties related to clients and the work area are indirectly related to the mobility intention and their effect is mediated by burnout; 3) longer professional (work) experience reduces the mobility intention. The main conclusion of our analysis is that in order to prevent the mobility and exit of professionals, it is necessary not only to create motivating organizational conditions for work, but also to prepare social professionals for the substantial elements of work, real life situations and the conflicts and difficulties involved.