Abstract:
The public sector is required to have a diverse, competent, and well-managed workforce that is capable and committed to delivering quality services to the Namibian people. In helping achieve this, the purpose of this study was to identify whether emotional intelligence and job satisfaction have an impact on employee work engagement and burnout. Further examination of whether work engagement and burnout are experienced differently according to sex, age, tenure, rank, number of dependants, educational qualification, and marital status was also undertaken. The focus is on public service employees specifically from the offices of the: Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation; the Ministry of Industrialisation and Trade, and the Ministry of Finance in Windhoek. The convenience sampling technique was used, with the data collected from 130 employees. The study took on a quantitative approach by making use of questionnaires. The Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (EQQ) was used to measure emotional intelligence; the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) measured job satisfaction; the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) measured work engagement and the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was used to measure burnout. The Cronbach Alpha, the Pearson correlation and, Kruskal-Wallis test were used to analyse the data. The study found a positive correlation between emotional intelligence with burnout (r=.10, p < 0.05) and work engagement (r= .21, p < 0.05), as well as a positive correlation between job satisfaction with burnout (r= .07, p < 0.05) and work engagement (r= .25, p < 0.05). Overall, emotional intelligence and job satisfaction have a positive correlation with work engagement and burnout. An emotionally intelligent and satisfied employee can become more engaged and can experience burnout. The study also reported that the variance in combined burnout is experienced differently based on sex, yet combined burnout and combined work engagement are not experienced differently based on age, number of years in the industry, marital status, number of dependants, highest qualification, and management level. The study recommends that human resources improve emotional intelligence and job satisfaction to influence employee engagement and burnout. Through emotional intelligence training and assessments, constant evaluation of job satisfaction and work engagement through surveys and regular practical day-to-day engagement activities. Introduce effective ii wellness programs and interventions to aid employees to cope with none work-related stress or demands. Further research is needed to further evaluate the experiences of burnout and work engagement with sex, age, tenure, rank, number of dependants, educational qualification and, marital status that was found.
