Assessing the impact of workaholism and work engagement on medical university employee stress and satisfaction levels

BACKGROUND: Workaholism (WH) is related with high mental trouble and physical objections, low employment and family fulfillment, and low occupation execution; however, work commitment is related with job and life satisfaction. This study aimed to assess the impact of WH and work engagement (WE) on medical university employee job stress and satisfaction. METHODS: This descriptive analytical study was conducted on workers employed in medical universities using validated questionnaires for data collection. The sample size was 330, from which 305 responded with completed questionnaire. The employees were the direct workers of different accessible medical universities in Karachi, Pakistan. The employee enrolment and distribution of the questionnaire was performed using non-probability convenient sampling. The Brief Job Questionnaire (BJQ), Dutch Work Addiction Scale (DUWAS) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) were used to assess the impact of job stress on job satisfaction and WE. The data was analyzed by applying descriptive statistics, Spearman correlation and regression analysis. A p-value of ≤ 0.05 was taken as significant. RESULTS: The study consisted of 117 (38.4%) male and 188 (61.6%) female participants; the mean age of participating employee was 28.50 ± 6.192. The mean score for WE was 3.78 ± 0.467, that of WH was 3.42 ± 0.559, for JS was 4.29 ± 0.400, whereas JSF was 3.10 ± 0.591. A positive correlation was observed between job stress, WH and WE. WH had a strong correlation with job stress and weak correlation with job satisfaction and performance. A significant difference was observed between WE and WH among males and females. CONCLUSIONS: The study presented with a significant effect of job satisfaction with WH and WE with job stress. Hence, indicating the importance of social skills and WE with fellow employees to increase the work productivity and performance. However, in case of over work and WH, an increase of job stress is inevitable.