Job Burnout among Safety Professionals: A Chinese Survey

As safety has been attracting the attention of all countries worldwide, the importance of safety professionals in safety management systems has been emphasized, which has consistently increased their workload. However, with the increase in work pressure, the income, social status, and social identity of safety professionals has not considerably improved, because of which the work motivation of safety professionals has reduced. Therefore, we aimed to identify the job burnout level (JBL) and its potential influencing factors among safety professionals in China. A total of 526 safety professionals from various industries participated. A univariate analysis of variance, independent sample t-test, bivariate correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were employed to analyze the situation of job burnout. An overwhelming majority of the safety professionals (98.3%) who participated in the questionnaire exhibited varying degrees of job burnout. The numbers of respondents with higher than normal emotional exhaustion (EE), lack of personal accomplishment (LPA), and depersonalization (DP) levels were 68, 474, and 381, respectively, accounting for 12.9%, 90.1%, and 72.4% of the total respondents, respectively. When different demographic characteristics were reviewed, the job burnout levels considerably varied. For example, male safety professionals (n = 434) exhibited higher levels of EE than female safety professionals (n = 92) (p = 0.025) because female safety professionals could release the dissatisfaction or stress they had encountered at work easily, but male safety professionals could not. Educational background had little effect on LPA (p > 0.05) and EE (p > 0.05), which indicated that job burnout was a general problem at all educational levels. The higher the age of respondents, the higher the level of LPA (p < 0.001). In addition to individual factors, work-related factors also had an impact on job burnout. For instance, monthly income had an impact on EE (p = 0.023) but had little impact on DP (p > 0.05). Furthermore, social, organizational, professional, and personal factors also had an impact on job burnout among safety professionals. Hence, to begin with, these aspects could be considered to alleviate the work pressure of safety professionals and reduce their job burnout levels.