The nexus between career anxiety, burnout, work engagement and job crafting in the South African SMME sector

Introduction Changes in job characteristics and conditions intensify uncertainty, necessitating investigating the extent to which employees experience career anxiety, which could adversely influence employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes. Career anxiety is distinct from job insecurity which consists out of objective and subjective job insecurity. Objective job insecurity is related to employment relations (viz. employment contract), while subjective job insecurity emphasizes anticipation relating to desired employment conditions. Career anxiety is an emotional state in response to attaining decent work and hindrances to job performance. Methods A quantitative research design was utilized by means of collecting primary data from 345 participants ( n = 345) using a questionnaire. Statistical analyses included regression analysis, as well as ascertaining the mediation role of job crafting and the moderating role of burnout. Results Career anxiety reverted significant associations with burnout and work engagement. Burnout was found to be significantly negatively associated with work engagement. Job crafting was found to be a significant mediator that partially mediates the association between career anxiety and burnout. Burnout was found to be statistically a moderator that moderates the association between career anxiety and work engagement. Discussion Results underscore that job crafting mediated the association between career anxiety and burnout, which, in turn, reduces burnout. Higher levels of burnout would exacerbate career anxiety, decreasing the experience of work engagement. Future studies should be conducted to validate the results. This study contributes to the corpus of knowledge regarding career anxiety, with a lacuna of research identified internationally indicative of the originality of the research.