Burnout of the courier in logistics company in China

ENG Abstract Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal streamers on the Job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. The past 25 years of research has established the complexity of the construct, and places the individual stress experience within a larger organizational context of people’s relation to their work.

Recently, the work on burnout has expanded internationally and has led to new conceptual models. The development of the logistics company to create many Jobs, special courier. However, facing to overload workload, the courier is prone to burnout. The aim of this research is to find what factors lead to courier appears occupation burnout and what are the solutions. In this paper, using the method of questionnaires solve the problem about burnout of the courier in logistics company in China. We hope can find factors to make contribute to further research in the future.

Key words: burnout, courier, logistics company, China l. Introduction 1. 1 Research Background of Burnout and logistics company The relationship that people have with their work, and the difficulties that can arise when that relationship goes awry, have been long recognized as a significant phenomenon of the modern age. The use of the term burnout for this phenomenon began to appear with some regularity in the sass in the United States, especially among people working in the human services.

This popular usage was presaged by Green’s 1961 novel, A Burnout Case, in which a spiritually tormented and disillusioned architect quits his Job and withdraws into the African Jungle. Even earlier writing, both fictional and nonfunctional, described similar phenomena, including extreme fatigue and the loss of idealism and passion for one’s Job. What is noteworthy is that the importance of burnout as a social problem was identified by both practitioners and social commentators long before it became a focus of systematic study by researchers.

Logistics is to satisfy customer needs, with the lowest cost, through the transport, storage, distribution and so on, to achieve raw materials, semi-finished products, finished products and related information from the origin of goods to the goods consumption to the planning, implementation and management of the whole process. Logistics is a system of control of raw materials, manufactured goods, finished goods and information,from the supply, the transfer of a variety of intermediate links and have to reach the physical movement of the final consumers, in order to achieve the organization’s goals.

Modern logistics is the product of economic globalization, economic globalization is an important service. The world of modern logistics industry grows steadily, Europe, Japan, America become important base logistics worldwide. 1. 2 The existing problems and the purpose of this paper In China, logistics industry started relatively late, with the rapid development of he national economy, the logistics industry market demand continued to expand.

Since twenty-first Century, the state to strengthen and improve macroeconomic regulation and control policy, China logistics industry to maintain rapid growth, constantly improve the logistics system, industry increasingly mature and norms. The development of the logistics company to create many Jobs, special courier. However, the courier is prone to burnout, with facing to overload workload, such as sending 50 parcels on average everyday, Guessing logistics and waiting for customers. Especially n the discount season, for the logistics company is a war, the courier will face a severe test.

Many express company clerks said, working overload to make them terribly fatigued, lead to service attitude decline or reject business is failing express industry. The aim of this research is to find what factors lead to courier appears occupation burnout and what are the solutions. 1. 3 Research Question (1) Is there any burnout in the courier in logistics company in China? If so, how often? (2) What are the major factors which contribute to their burnout? II . Literature Review 2. 1 Concept of Burnout

Burnout was initially a very slippery concept – there was no standard definition of it, although there was a wide variety of opinions about what it was and what could be done about it. Different people used the term to mean very different things, so there was not always a basis for constructive communication about the problem and solutions for it. However, there was actually an underlying consensus about three core dimensions of the burnout experience, and subsequent research on this issue led to the development of a multidimensional theory of burnout (Miasmal 1982, 1998).

This theoretical framework continues to be the predominant one in the runt field. Today, the most commonly accepted definition of burnout is the three- component conceptualization used by Miasmal and colleagues (Miasmal, 1982; Miasmal & Jackson, 1981; Pines & Miasmal, 1980). One component of burnout, emotional exhaustion, is characterized by a lack of energy and a feeling that one’s emotional resources are used up. Another component, diversification or demutualization, is marked by the treatment of clients as objects rather than people.

The final component of burnout, diminished personal accomplishment, is characterized by a tendency to evaluate oneself negatively. 2. 2 Assessment of Burnout In the sass the work on burnout shifted to more systematic empirical research. A particular focus of this research was the assessment of burnout, and several different measures were developed. The scale that has had the strongest psychometric properties and continues to be used most widely by researchers is the Miasmal Burnout Inventory (MBA) developed by Miasmal and Jackson (1981).

Subsequent research using the MBA has revealed that the intensity and frequency dimensions of burnout are highly correlated (Anderson & Knick, 1984; Brooking, Bolton, Brown, & McElroy, 1985; Gaines & Jerkier, 1983), so the revised version of the MBA (Miasmal & Jackson, 1986) includes only the frequency dimension. The MBA- Human Services Survey (MBA-HAS) was designed for use with people working in the human services and health care. A second version was developed for use by people working in educational settings (the MBA-Educators Survey, or MBA-SEES).

In both the HAS and SEES forms, the labels for the three dimensions reflected the focus on occupations where workers interacted extensively with other people (clients, patients, students, etc): emotional exhaustion, diversification, and reduced personal accomplishment. 2. 3 Major factors Burnout is an individual experience that is specific to the work context. Thus, the research over the past 35 years has maintained a consistent focus on the situational factors that are the prime correlates of this phenomenon.

The results of this research paint a clear picture of the impact of the work situation on individual burnout. These situational Factors include Job characteristics, occupational characteristics, organizational characteristics. People do not simply respond to the work setting; rather, they bring unique qualities to the relationship. These personal factors include anemographic variables (such as age and formal education), enduring personality characteristics, and work-related attitudes. Several of these individual characteristics have been found to be related to burnout.

However, these relationships are not as great in size as those for burnout and situational factors, which suggests that burnout is more of a social phenomenon than an individual one. 2. 4 Summary Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal streamers on the Job, and is defined by the three dimensions of emotional exhaustion, diversification, and reduced personal accomplishment. With the sustainable velveteen of the economy make a spurt of progress of science and technology, people prefer to shop on the net, along with the rise of the logistics field.

At the same time, faced with the grim work overload, the courier is easy to produce occupation burnout, which leads to the decline of quality of service phenomenon. The social focus of burnout, the solid research basis concerning the syndrome, and its specific ties to the work domain make a distinct and valuable contribution to people’s health and well-being. Ill . Research Methodology 3. 1 Research Questions The present research was to examine the following research questions: here any burnout in the courier in logistics company in China? If so, how often? 2) What are the major factors which contribute to their burnout? 3. 2 Subject Description The 20 subjects, who participated in the questionnaire, are all the courier who are working in logistics in Beijing. The courier is mainly responsible for the business of University of International Business and Economics. All of them are male, whose age ranges from 21 to 50. All the 20 surveys are valid. The 3 interviewees, who are all over 40 years old, were chosen from the 20 subjects. These three interviewees were finally chosen because of the following sound reasons.

First of all, of all the demographic variables that have been studied, age is the one that has been most consistently related to burnout. Among younger employees the level of burnout is reported to be higher than it is among those over 30 or 40 years old. Secondly, courier whose age ranges from 25 to 30, with I-to-5-year working experience, experience the least burnout . The three interviewees, who should have experienced the least burnout according to the research results, would offer us a picture of their real working lives in a logistics company, from which we may infer all the courier’ lives there. 3. 3 Instruments

In order to resolve research questions,we refer to relevant literatures about Burnout of the courier in logistics company by internet, such as previous research papers, cases and so on. In order to obtain sufficient descriptive data for painting a clear and virtual picture of courier’ lives in logistics company, 20 the courier accepted questionnaire. 3. 4 Procedures Steps : questionnaires Method for obtaining the research data needed by questionnaire, questionnaire includes content, questions, answer mode and index selection. Among them, the basic situation questionnaire,questions and answers to the questionnaire way.

First of all, is the main respondents simple personal data, including age, education level, personal monthly income. This part is the single way, by the respondents. Secondly, the basic situation about the logistics company to express the benefits as well as courier attitude to work, including your company will provide the welfare, your company, your current subsidies which have their wages, do you think the extraction rate is reasonable and so on. This part of the respondents according to their own experience to answer. A total of 15 questions, each question has the certain. IV c. Results and Discussions . The questionnaires about courier Having out all the data from questionnaires into the pie charts, we can see from the table that respondents from 20 courier, who are mainly responsible for the business of University of International Business and Economics, in this study reported different conditions about their working. First, chart (1) shows the courier work how many hours a day: The statistics show working 8-12 hours a day, which accounts for 76%,is the most; then the next is working 12-14 hours with 17%, followed by working 8 hours, representing 4%; and finally come working more than 14 hours at 3%.

Most couriers working time more than the legal working time 8 hours. Secondly, chart (2) shows the courier to present their wage level of satisfaction degree: The pie chart illustrates most of the courier that their wages are Just so so to this stage, there are some people dissatisfied, very few they are in satisfactory condition. Finally, chart (3) shows the courier attitude to the Job: 4. 2 Results to those research questions and analysis From the above data we can see that The courier work long hours, less satisfied with their income.

Facing to heavy work and low wages, courier attitude to their work is not active. In this case,the courier is very easy to have the occupation burnout. The main factor which can make contributed to the burnout of the courier in logistics company in china is the Job characteristics and work-related attitudes. Thirty years of reform and opening up, China’s economy has got enormous development, continuously improve the overall economy, comprehensive economic strength strengthens day by day.

In our country, shortage economy era has ended, economic development has entered a structural surplus stage, economic growth has changed from supply constraint to demand constraint, the sustained and rapid economic Roth is brought about by the accelerated large quantities of goods, services and information flow, which also brought the logistics needs of the exponential growth. Facing to a lot of business in logistics company one day, especially on holidays, the courier is very busy and stress. Coupled with the salary is not very high, leading to low service quality.

Long time waiting to pick up, occasionally suffering from customer scold, the courier feel bad. So go down for a long time, the courier is negative sentiment to the Job, gradually producing a occupation burnout. V . Conclusions 5. 1 Major findings In this part, the major findings will be elaborated in terms of two research Research Question One: Is there any burnout in the courier in logistics questions. Company in China? If so, how often? The answer to research question one is a definitely yes, there is burnout of the courier in logistics company in China.

Furthermore, these courier experienced much more burnout in the special holiday sales activities. When online discount season every month, the courier’s workload will increase greatly, at this time, courier will increase occupation burnout. Research Question Two: What are the major factors which contribute to their burnout? Having analyzed the qualitative data on the questionnaires with the twenty courier are working in logistics in Beijing, who are mainly responsible for the business of University of International Business and Economics. E know that the Job characteristics and work-related attitudes were the two main factors which contribute to the courier’ burnout. 5. 2 Implications The research objective of this paper is to survey on burnout of the courier in logistics company in China. Logistics is an important link in the production and sales, is important to guarantee the efficient operation of enterprises. At the same time, the logistics service is an important aspect to improve the competitiveness of enterprises, timely and accurately provide customers with products and services, it has become an important competitive factors besides the price between enterprises.

The courier as the main logistics staff, also plays an indispensable role. As a service company, the most important is the service, the service decided the company, service is the company’s survival, a company is mainly is the service quality. So as a service industry, the most important is the service personnel, logistics company is a service many, logistics company a lot of the courier, courier attitude to work directly affects the company’s image, indirectly affect the social. This paper research on burnout of the courier in logistics company in China, help to further study and solve the problem of burnout courier. . 3 Limitations of the present study Firstly, the size of sample population is too small, which may make it difficult for the results and conclusions to be generalized. 20 courier are working in logistics in Beijing, who are mainly responsible for the business of University of International Business and Economics. It cannot stand for all the courier in China. Secondly, the samples are all male, did not involve female. Gender is different, psychological also is different, lead to product burnout is different. This point has not done much research.

What is more, Just questionnaires with 20 courier cannot provide us with sufficient opportunities to know what’s actually happening in the courier’ lives. Without thorough and deep data, it’s hard to offer the most accurate and authentic first-hand materials to policymakers or administrators for figuring out a way to improve the current situations in logistics company in China. 5. Suggestions for further studies Firstly, researchers should enlarge the size of the sample population if possible, like surveying all the courier in a logistics company in China, irrespective of subjects, through the instrument.