Department of Management & Organisation

A short report from Tong Yew Kwan on his research findings presented in the conference.

Tong Yew Kwan

Job burnout has always been a major area of research for organisational scholars. From an individual’s perspective, burnout leads to increased anxiety, depression and cardiovascular problems. From an organisational perspective, burnout negatively affects job performance, job satisfaction and organisational commitment. These deleterious consequences have led to large volume of research on burnout interventions.

Among the possible interventions, scholars have recognized the effectiveness of respite and recovery in alleviating burnout. Respite and recovery refer to the process of unwinding and recuperation. Studies have found that respite such as vacations and leisure are effective in reducing the repercussions of burnout. However, employees are unlikely go on vacations or engage in leisure activities as and when they like. This limits the effectiveness of vacation and leisure as recovery tools and increases the need for an alternate and expeditious on-the-job recovery mechanism.

In a recent paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference for Society of industrial and Organisational Psychology (SIOP), we developed and tested a model examining the relationship between burnout, cyberloafing and work/life attitudes. We argued that cyberloafing is an on-the-job recovery mechanism. Specifically, it is a form of workplace leisure that alleviates the negative impact of burnout on employees. Using data obtained from 191 working professionals, we found that emotionally burnout employees who cyberloaf are more satisfied with their job, more committed to their organisation and are more satisfied with their life than their counterparts who do not cyberloaf. This is because cyberloafing temporarily detaches emotionally burnout employees from work stressors.

This poster received numerous favourable feedbacks from conference participants. Many scholars have expressed interest in this paper and praised the timeliness of this line of research.