Identification of Factors Affecting the Burnout in the Employees of Ardabil Regional Water Company and Providing Solutions Using the System Dynamics Method

Recognition and prevention of burnout plays an important role in promoting mental health and increasing the quality of services provided. This paper aimed to prevent the occurrence of this problem, seeking to identify the effective factors on the employees' burnout.

Many studies have been carried out by researchers on staff burnout using a descriptive-analytical approach, but there is no model comprehensively identifying the factors affecting employee burnout and, more importantly, expressing the relationships between the factors involved. Therefore, system dynamics analysis and VENSIM software have been used for explaining the quantitative relationships between factors affecting employees' burnout, evaluation and simulation.

After designing causal, flow diagrams and model validation, four scenarios were extracted using system dynamics and simulation methods. The first scenario, which shows the current status of the company, indicated an increase in burnout. In the second scenario, with increased job satisfaction, employee productivity increased, but higher productivity, in practice, did not lead to reduction in burnout. In the third scenario, burnout decreased with increasing occupational control variables. And in the fourth scenario, by increasing the welfare and rest parameters of the staff, it was found that this scenario also had a significant effect on reducing the burnout of employees.

From among the four simulated scenarios, the fourth one, which is the increase in staff welfare parameters, had the most impact on reducing the burnout of Ardabil Regional Water Company employees.