An Examination of Employee Wellbeing and Work-Life Balance in a Higher Educational Institution in Jamaica

Abstract

Introduction: People are expected to simultaneously work and balance their lives in today’s society. The expectations are so vast that many people experience burnout. Therefore, burnout is a good indicator of whether people are adequately experiencing good health and/or having a certain level of well-being

Objective: This study employs the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to assess burnout among employees at a Higher Educational Institution, Jamaica, and how to interpret, collect and analyse the data are presented in the section entitled ‘methodology’.

Methods and materials: This study employed a probabilistic explanatory cross-sectional research design. A standardized instrument was used to collect the data for this research.

Findings: The mean value for the overall MBI is 40.8±12.6 (95% CI: 37.8-42.7), with mean values being more than 30 and this indicates a high level of burnout among the sampled respondents. As such, there is a high burnout among staffers at HEI, and belief of low-level of personal achievement (8.6±7.7, 95% CI: 7.7-9.8. It can be deduced from the current findings that people believed that HEI is doing little as it relates to their personal achievement or accomplishment. In addition, there is moderate external burnout experienced by employees of HEI (7.0±5.1, 6.2-7.8, maximum value is 18) and this suggests that burnout of employees is substantially owing to HEI’s milieu and not in general.

Conclusion: There warning signs that stress is high among the employees of this organisation(i.e., low employee wellbeing and work-life balance). Stresses related to toxic workplace climate and work demands, resource insufficiency and management related deficiencies needs to be significantly reduced and where possible eliminated.