Workplace Burnout Within the Project Management Discipline: a Comparative Look at Sweden and the UK

Sammanfattning: Research into burnout has often focused on the helping professions, such as medical care (Schaufeli, Leiter & Maslach, 2009). However, the cost of burnout to private organisations is high, since it correlates with lower productivity and increased turnover/turnover intention amongst others (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). Project managers are at a particularly high risk of burnout due to the high-demands and pressure of the role (Pinto, Dawood & Pinto, 2014). This research uses the Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS) and Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) to assess which factors of project manager work-life correlate most strongly with the risk of burnout, as well as whether there are differences in the nature of work-life across a Swedish and British sample. We find no AWS factors correlating with the negative subscales of burnout, but reward, fairness and values all correlate positively with professional efficacy. The only significant work-life difference between our Swedish and UK sample lies in the perception of workload, where Swedes are less satisfied with their workload than the British sample. There are no significant differences in mean burnout scores between this study’s project manager sample (N=41) and the normative data provided by the Maslach-Leiter databases (N=47,800). The implications of these findings for future research and organisational policy are discussed.