Organisational change and employee burnout: The moderating effects of support and job control

As organisations experience rapid change, employee health and well-being has emerged as an important issue. Although organisational change can result in psychological and physical stress among employees (Hylton, 2004), providing positive organisational resources, such as support and job control, may help reduce employee burnout (e.g., Dubois et al., 2014; Leiter and Maslach, 2009; Puleo, 2011). Therefore, using a sample of Canadian health-care staff (N = 202) who were involved in a large-scale organisational change, we investigated: (a) whether perceptions of organisational change stressors were associated with burnout (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy), (b) the extent to which supervisor support and job control were directly related to burnout, and (c) whether support and control moderated the relationship between change stressors and burnout. Job control was directly related to all of the burnout components, and support was related to exhaustion and cynicism. Supervisor support buffered the negative relationship between change stressors and exhaustion and between change stressors and cynicism. Job control moderated the negative relationship between change and professional efficacy.