The relationship between emotional intelligence and burnout: A research in the public sector

The high emotional intelligence of employees reveals many positive results in the workplace. In the case of burnout, the performance of employees is affected in a negative way and may lead to material and spiritual losses. For this reason, the factors related to burnout must be identified. The studies to determine the relationship between burnout and emotional intelligence mostly focused on the health and education sector employees instead of employees in public institutions. In this context, the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of emotional intelligence dimensions of employees to burnout levels in the public sector. In this study, for the employees working in an old public institution located in Ankara, the differences in emotional intelligence and burnout levels related to gender and occupational characteristics and the impact of emotional intelligence on burnout were researched. A survey was conducted with 343 employees in the institution. According to the findings of the research, no significant difference in emotional intelligence level of public employees by gender is observed. However, according to the employees' professions, there is a significant difference between levels of emotional intelligence. In addition, it is determined that the emotional usage of optimism, a subdimension of emotional intelligence, has a meaningful and positive effect on the feeling of personal accomplishment, a subdimension of burnout. Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Burnout, Public Employees.