The association between job design and organisational performance: the role of workforce engagement and burnout

Strategic Human Resource Management research generally focuses on a set of HR practices, thereby concealing single HR practices’ potential impact. This study examines whether – and, if so – how job design, an important HR practice, relates to organisational performance and whether a mutual gains, mutual loss or conflicting outcomes perspective holds. A multilevel moderation and mediation path analysis – underpinned by Job-Demands-Resources theory – was performed to test whether the workforce’s perceived job resources and job demands relate to labour productivity, via workforce well-being (i.e. workforce engagement and burnout). Analyses are based on an industry-wide sample of 187 organisations (and 33801 employees). Our findings show that job resources are positively (negatively) associated with engagement (burnout) and labour productivity. Job demands are positively related to burnout, but this relationship is buffered by job resources. Surprisingly, organisations with a highly engaged and/or a low burned-out workforce do not show higher labour productivity. Overall, findings suggest that the organisation and workforce benefit from high job resources, in line with the mutual gains (win-win) perspective. Results for job demands indicate, in line with a mutual loss (lose-lose) perspective, that nobody seems to benefit from high job demands. These findings create useful insights for research and practitioners.