Emotional job demands and the role of matching job resources: a cross-sectional survey study among health care workers

Background Research on emotional labour in health care work has not yet revealed under what conditions emotional job demands have an impact on employee health and well-being. There is a need for more theory to unveil the black box of emotional labour processes. Objectives To test the moderating role of matching (i.e. emotional) and non-matching (i.e. cognitive) job resources in the relation between emotional job demands and employee health/well-being (i.e. emotional exhaustion, employee creativity, and work motivation). Design A cross-sectional survey with anonymous questionnaires was conducted. Settings A large organization for residential elderly care with eight locations in an urban area in the Netherlands. Participants Questionnaires were distributed to 1259 health care workers, of which 826 people returned the questionnaire (66% response rate). Methods In addition to descriptive statistics, multivariate multiple regression analysis (LISREL 8.54) with cross-validation was conducted. Results Findings showed that emotional job resources moderated the relation between emotional job demands and health/well-being outcomes. Firstly, emotional job resources were able to moderate the relation between emotional job demands and emotional exhaustion. Secondly, both emotional job resources and, to a lesser extent, cognitive job resources were able to moderate the relation between emotional job demands and positive well-being outcomes (i.e. employee creativity and work motivation). Finally, cross-validation showed that parameter estimates did not vary across subsamples. Conclusions Job resources could compensate for resources lost through meeting the requirements of emotional job demands, thereby reducing stress-reactions and increasing well-being. Providing health care workers with more, preferably matching, job resources could make emotional job demands less stressful, and even stimulating and challenging. Future longitudinal studies should investigate the interplay of emotional job demands and (matching) job resources more profoundly.