Examining the relationship between social workers’ emotional labor and their burn-out level: Focusing on the role of self-care

While burnout phenomenon among the social workers remains as well-explored topic of discussion for the past decade, the potential effect of emotional labor experienced by frontline social workers has not been investigated in depth. This study examines the relationship between emotional labor experienced by social workers and their burn out level, particularly focusing on the role of self-care as a potential mediator. To do so, we conducted an on-line survey with social workers working in A city, and data from 191 respondents were used for analyses. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted and the PROCESS macro for SPSS was used with the bootstrap procedure to test the mediation. The results show that first, social workers’ emotional labor was positively associated with their burnout, indicating that the more they were engaged in emotional labor, the higher level of their burnout level was. The emotional labor also significantly predicted their self-care, showing that the higher they scored on their emotional labor scale, the less self-care they were engaged with. Second, the mediation analyses revealed that self-care partially mediated the relationships between emotional labor and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of clients. On the other hand, self-care fully mediated the relationship between emotional labor and reduced personal accomplishment, indicating that emotional labor experienced by social workers significantly affect their ability to care for themselves, and that this damaged self-care ability in turn increases their burnout level. The implications based on the findings are provided, offering insights into needed changes and strategies to prevent social workers’ burnout in the future.