Associations Between Social Work Place Safety and Burnout

Background and Purpose: Historically, burnout has been an area of concern for the field of social work due to its negative impact on social workers, agencies, and clients. Social workers are at a high risk for burnout, a type of psychological distress that can lead to leaving the profession. Concurrently, today’s social workers are at a higher risk for client violence, including perceived threat of assault, verbal assault, damage to property, and physical assault. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between burnout, client violence, and different social work place settings.

Methods: Data were from the 2015-2016 Social Work Safety Survey (SWSS), which is a sample of National Association of Social Workers members residing in the state of Georgia (N= 141). SWSS participants reported burnout through a three-item scale (alpha = .818). Specifically, the three mailed survey questions that composed the burnout scale were: 1) Have you felt emotionally exhausted as a result of your job? 2) Have you had feelings of cynicism related to your job? and 3) Have you had a sense of ineffectiveness related to your job? Survey response options were “No,” “Rarely,” “Sometimes,” and “Often;” a mean score of these burnout questions was computed to create the main dependent variable. The independent variables for the multivariate model were: length of time at current job, average hours worked per week, location of workplace - in private clinical practice or other settings, percentage of clients with trauma, satisfaction with supervision they received, amount of safety training hours, and incidents of client violence. Demographic variables in the model included age, gender, and race/ethnicity.

Results: In the linear regression model, burnout was significantly predicted by private clinical practice (β = 1.65), incidents of client violence (β = .39), and average hours worked per week (β = .04). However, length of time at their current job, satisfaction with supervision received, their percentage of clients with trauma, and safety training had no significant effects on burnout. 

Conclusions and Implications: This study offers insights into the various workplace contexts that can affect professional burnout. It confirms that most notedly frequent exposure to threats of violence or actual violence predicted burnout. Additionally, this study confirms that working in a private clinical practice setting also predicted burnout. Interestingly, there was a negative correlation between client violence and private clinical practice (p = .02, r = -.20), indicating that there are disparate phenomenon contributing to burnout depending on one’s work environment. These findings have implications for both social work practice and research. For practitioners, this study provides an increased understanding of those social workers who are most at risk for burnout. For researchers, this study builds on previous research related to social work safety and burnout, a currently topical area of our profession’s concern.