Footnote:
In: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, forthcoming
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments July 5, 2021 erstellt
Description:
Government agencies around the world struggle to retain frontline workers, as high job demandsand low job resources contribute to persistently high rates of employee burnout. Although fourdecades of research have documented the predictors and potential costs of frontline workerburnout, we have limited causal evidence on strategies that reduce it. In this article, we report ona multi-city field experiment (n=536) aimed at increasing perceived social support and affirmingbelonging among 911 dispatchers. We find that a six-week intervention that prompts dispatchersto share advice anonymously and asynchronously with their peers in other cities reduces burnoutby 8 points (0.4 SD) and cuts resignations by more than half (3.6 percentage points) four monthsafter the intervention ended. We provide supporting evidence that the intervention operates byincreasing perceived social support and belonging in an online laboratory experiment (n=497).These findings suggest that low-cost belonging affirmation techniques can reduce frontlineworker burnout and help agencies retain workers, saving a mid-sized city at least $400,000 inpersonnel costs