The relationship between public service employees’ personal resources and psychological well-being

Abstract

The study investigates the mediating role of psychological capital in the relationship between personal resources (mindfulness, self-leadership) and psychological well-being (burnout, work engagement) for a sample of 226 public sector employees in South Africa. Both mindfulness and self-leadership have a statistically significant positive influence on psychological capital, while psychological capital mediated the relationship between both mindfulness and work engagement, and mindfulness and burnout. psychological capital also mediates the relationship between both self-leadership and engagement, and self-leadership and burnout. Psychological capital has a statistically significant positive influence on work engagement and a statistically significant negative influence on burnout. The results show that mindfulness and self-leadership strategies can enhance psychological capital, reducing burnout and increasing engagement. Point for practitioners The public sector requires energised employees to serve the public despite demanding circumstances. Therefore, management must find ways to support employees in increasing work engagement levels and avoiding burnout. Since personal resources (mindfulness, self-leadership, psychological capital) are shown to enhance engagement and decrease burnout, managers and human resource managers can build these individual resources through training and development, and consider them in recruitment processes.