Cortisol levels, burnout and engagement in university employees

People’s psychological relationship with work can be conceptualized as a continuum ranging from negative experiences of professional burnout to positive experiences, known as engagement. A retrospective ex post facto study was carried out for the purpose of exploring and measuring the degree of relation of professional burnout and job engagement to cortisol levels and the filing of claims for medical costs among university employees. One hundred ninety-nine subjects participated. A weak positive relation was found between the factor Emotional Exhaustion and cortisol levels, as well as a negative relationship between health symptoms and cortisol levels. No differences in burnout and cortisol levels were found between subjects who put in claims for health services and those who do not, or in health service claims when paired with the factors of professional burnout and cortisol levels. We conclude that low levels of cortisol could be related to engagement levels, and are related to low levels of professional burnout. We suggest that organization management should pay attention not just to administrative issues, but also to factors of organizational structure, the redesign of substantive activities, and the development of competencies for life development, as a way of contributing to overall organizational effectivenes