Investigating change fatigue, burnout, work engagement, organisational commitment and turnover intention in the South African insurance industry

Abstract

The goal of the study is to investigate the relationship between change fatigue, work engagement, burnout, organisational commitment and turnover intention. The study further investigated whether work engagement and burnout act as potential mediators to the relationships. A cross-sectional survey design was used and a survey questionnaire to collect data from a sample of employees working for an insurance company (n=298). The questionnaire utilised for data collection contained questions that related to measuring change fatigue through the Change Fatigue measure (Bernerth, Walker, & Harris, 2011); work engagement through the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), burnout through the Maslach Burnout Inventory – General Survey (MBI-GS); (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Lieter, 2001), organisational commitment through the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Allen & Meyer, 1990) and turnover intentions through the Turnover Intention scale developed by Sjoberg and Sverke (2000). The questionnaire also contained a section for respondents’ biographical details. Descriptive statistics and the Pearson-Correlation coefficient were used to conduct statistical analysis (Leedy & Ormrod, 2005). Structural equation modelling was also utilised to determine whether there were changes in change fatigue when work engagement and burnout mediated the relationships. Change fatigue had a significant and positive relationship with all the variables indicating that when employees are exposed to job demands for a longer time frame, there is a likelihood that they will develop burnout, experience decreased work engagement, exhibit decreased organisational commitment, and eventually the employees may think about leaving the organisation. Change fatigue had a significant and positive relationship with exhaustion, cynicism, and burnout and correlated negatively with organisational commitment and work engagement. A conclusion is provided and recommendations for future research are made.