ISSN 0120—5552 eISSN 2011—7531 Vol. 34, N° 2, 2018 Fecha de recepción: 7 de julio de 2017 Fecha de aceptación: 20 de septiembre de 2017 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14482/sun.34.2.158.72

artículo original / original article

Carolina Aranda Beltrán, Manuel Pando Moreno, José Salazar Estrada, Fátima Mares Hernández¹

¹ Researchers from the Department of Public Health, University of Guadalajara.

Correspondence: Dr. Carolina Aranda Beltrán. Address: Joaquín Aguirre Berlanga # 970, Jardines Alcalde, Postal Code: 44290. Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico). Telephone: 38 24 70 56. E—mail: caranda2000@yahoo.com.mx

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the relationship among the triggers and facilitators variables of the influential psychosocial type with Burnout Syndrome in grocery store workers, in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Material and methods: The study was cross—sectional and applied to 321 people working in grocery stores located in the municipality of Guadalajara, Jalisco. A sociodemographic and labor data questionnaire was applied for the evaluation of psychosocial variables and the Maslach Burnout Inventory scale (MBI—HSS) for the presence of Burnout Syndrome. Both descriptive and inferential analysis were included. Under informed consent the respondents accepted their participation voluntarily.

Results: 64.2% of the population presented Burnout Syndrome. Emotional exhaustion was the most affected (59.9%). Several triggers and / or facilitators were associated with more than one burned dimension, specifically with the Emotional exhaustion dimension.

Conclusions: Grocery stores are usually a family business. The people who work in them, depend on them to survive. They are a source of employment, tranquility and protection. Thus, working safely affirms a better life quality and customer service.

Keywords: triggers, facilitators, Burnout syndrome.

Resumen

Objetivo: Analizar la relación entre las variables desencadenantes y facilitadores del tipo psicosocial influyente con el síndrome de Burnout en los trabajadores de las tiendas de abarrotes en Guadalajara, México.

Material y métodos: El estudio fue transversal y aplicado a 321 personas que trabajaban en supermercados ubicados en el municipio de Guadalajara, Jalisco. Se aplicó un cuestionario sociodemográfico y de datos laborales para la evaluación de variables psicosociales y la escala de inventario de Maslach Burnout (MBI—HSS) para la presencia de síndrome de Burnout. Se incluyeron análisis tanto descriptivos como inferenciales. Bajo consentimiento informado los encuestados aceptaron su participación voluntariamente.

Resultados: 64,2% de la población presentó síndrome de Burnout. El agotamiento emocional fue el más afectado (59,9%). Varios disparadores y/o facilitadores se asociaron con más de una dimensión quemada, específicamente con la dimensión de agotamiento emocional.

Conclusión: Las tiendas de abarrotes suelen ser una empresa familiar. Las personas que trabajan en ellas dependen de ellos para sobrevivir. Son una fuente de empleo, tranquilidad y protección. Por lo tanto, trabajar con seguridad afirma una mejor calidad de vida y servicio al cliente.

Palabras clave: Desencadenantes facilitadores, síndrome de burnout.

INTRODUCTION

The grocery stores, according to the National Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE) of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) in Mexico, belong to the economic sector specifically classified as “retail trade of groceries and food” (1, 2, 3) are the most important units for final consumers, they are classified as microenterprises, representing 95% of the total number of companies in the nation (4). Even from the 2009 Economic Census, 13.9% of the economic activities belonged to the grocery stores, of which 32% are located in Guadalajara (5). In 2015, this city had 7034 grocery stores, with an estimated 1.9 people working per store (6).

In Mexico, the attention and support of a grocery store depends on several activities and / or functions within it such as: seeking the customer's attention and comfort, listening to orders and any other talk, promoting sales, serving suppliers, to mention a few, but they are also exposed to endless risks where the triggers and / or facilitators (any circumstance, condition, event of the working environment that occurs chronically and that alters the worker's health) of stress symptoms may be present. An example of these triggers and / or facilitators are age, sex, marital status, and others of work type such as workload, salary or remuneration, to name a few (7, 8, 9).

It is known that one of the repercussions to health from exposure to psychosocial risk factors is the burnout syndrome (10), understood as the final state of a progression of unsuccessful attempts to manage work stress and as a three—dimensional syndrome develops in those workers who work in contact with people, manifested in three factors or dimensions: physical and / or emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low personal fulfillment at work, being able to present all three dimensions at once, or two or one (11). This variable has been widely analyzed in populations of doctors, nurses (12,13), administrative staff, teachers (14), road agents, congress workers (15), housewives (16), police (17), psychologists ( 18), but not enough studied in workers of grocery stores, and, of the studies already published they appear under the approaches of marketing (19), accounting (20), economics and finance (21) and few with health aspects (10, 22, 23).

Due to the importance that grocery stores and their workers represent to society, the objective of this paper is based on analyzing the relationship between the influencing variables or facilitators of psychosocial type with the burnout syndrome in workers of grocery stores in Guadalajara, Mexico.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Type of study: The study is cross—sectional.

Study population: The study population were people who worked in grocery stores located in the municipality of Guadalajara, Jalisco, excluding any business that is not qualified as a “grocery store” (3). The stores were selected supported by the Roji Guide (cartographic guide) of Guadalajara (24). Six of the 7 zones in which the city of Guadalajara is divided, excluding the Minerva area because it is a rather commercial and industrial area (25). Sixteen blocks were chosen per zone where the worker considered as the “main worker or responsible for the store” would be surveyed. Because the prevalences of the syndrome fluctuate from 11.4% (26) to 29.3% (27) or 39.4% (28), it was considered a 30% expected prevalence, with an acceptable error of .05 and an index of 95% confidence, resulting in a total sample of 315 subjects, to which a 5 percent non—response rate was added, totaling 331 subjects, of which 10 questionnaires were eliminated because they were answered incompletely, leaving a total of 321 people to survey.

Of this total, 54.5% were men, the rest were women. The minimum age was 12 years with a maximum of 83, an average age of 43.5 years and a standard deviation of 16. Most 57.9% were married. 31.5% had high school studies, 6.9% had a bachelor's degree, and a person with a master's degree. The minimum working age was 1 month (1.2%), the maximum of 40 years (0.9%), with an average of 9.4 years of work. The most worked shift was mixed (72.3%). Weekly work hours reached up to 133 hours with a minimum of 6, and an average of 67 hours of work per week, working 65.1% on 7 days of the week and Monday being the most worked day (100%) (Table 1).

Evaluation instruments

Two questionnaires were applied: one on sociodemographic and labor data for the evaluation of psychosocial variables, as well as the Maslach Burnout Inventory scale (MBI—HSS) to assess the presence of burnout syndrome.

The scale of assessment of “Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)” (29) consists of 22 items distributed in the three dimensions or subscales already mentioned. The scale is Likert—type, where 0 means never and 6 every day. The scores obtained were based on the American norm and Catalan adaptation placing them at low, medium and high levels, where low levels mean no presence of burnout and medium and high levels mean presence. The general prevalence of the Syndrome is acquired with at least one dimension burned. With respect to the psychometric properties of the scale, it has a Cronbach's alpha of .684 and an explained variance of 43.8 (30).

Statistic analyses

They were of two types: descriptive (frequencies, percentages, averages and prevalences) and inferential analysis (with values of association of OR> to one, an Confidence Interval (CI) that did not include the unit and a value of “p” equal or less than 0.05 were included).

Ethical aspects

With informed consent and the necessary information regarding the study, the people surveyed accepted their participation voluntarily. This study is considered risk—free category one, according to the regulations of the General Health Law on Health Research in its Article 17 of the Official Gazette of the Federation in Mexico (31).

RESULTS

In addition to the data already exposed on the study population, extra information was also obtained on the stores where they work as most people say that the store is their own or family (76—82%). 69.5% said to be the main worker, 65.7% are satisfied with the acquired economic gain, 46.1% are stressed to acquire that profit. Almost all (94.7%) say they have another store close to theirs and that this situation stresses them (19.6%). In addition, they were asked if close to their store there was a “convenience” store, 42.1% said yes, but that it was not stressful (10.3%) (Table 2).

Of the 321 participants, 64.2% manifest the burnout syndrome (one or more of a burned dimension). Being placed on the medium and high level is the presence of burnout, the dimension most affected was emotional exhaustion (59.9%) followed by the Low performance at work (31.2%) and then Depersonalization 22.1% (Table 3).

Regarding the association data (Table 4), working for more than 67 hours a week, not being satisfied with their acquired economic gain, feeling stressed by that gain, having another store close, whether or not it is a convenience store, working a mixed shift and renting the store, was associated with having more than one burnout dimension. As can be seen in the same table, there are several variables that are specifically associated with the dimension of emotional exhaustion and only two with lack of realization and one with depersonalization.

DISCUSSION

According to the data provided by the INE—GI (32) and the data collected in this study, grocery stores are an essential part for those who work as well as for other dependents. Coinciding with the data of Abud and González (33) grocery stores are micro and small businesses owned mostly by families, more than 82% of our population says so.

According to Javela, Taquino, Duque and Cruz (34), Chávez, Cruz and Ríos (4) González and Polanco (35) previously working at a grocery store was «more favorable»; currently, the construction of other stores, such as convenience, stores has caused a certain decline in the number of grocery stores, making them less profitable; the growth of these stores has also been demonstrated by the INEGI (32), while those of convenience increased by 84 percent, the grocery stores only grew by 1.5%. These data were corroborated in this study since one of the questions was directed to whether there was a convenience store near its store, to which almost 95% of them answered yes, but that this situation did not worry them or stressed them (20%).

A study conducted in grocery stores in Bogotá (36) had different results, men are the main workers in their stores while in this study women reach the majority (53.1 against 54.5%); In addition, the ages fluctuate between 36 and 50 years in Bogotá against a mere adolescent of 12 years to an older adult, specifically of the fourth age (37), of 83 years. Compared with the same study, the schooling data attracts attention when finding workers with a high level of education, be it undergraduate or master>s degree. 62% say that the place is owned, against 76.6%.

On the other hand, on the revealed prevalences of the Syndrome, it can be seen that 64.2% have at least one of the three burned dimensions, compared to studies as close as possible to that occupation, we can observe prevalences that go from 75% in store workers in commercial centers in Guadalajara (11) to 55% in grocery store workers in a convenience sampling (23). It is agreed that the emotional exhaustion dimension has the highest prevalence (59.9, 41.1 and 62.5%); followed by low performance at work (31.2, 59.9 and 50%) and finally depersonalization (21.1, 22.4 and 32.5%) (11, 23). In the case of the variables with association, Pando (11) agrees with this study when finding an association between the emotional exhaustion dimension and the work shift. Qualitatively (38) but comparing with our results, it is observed how the workers of the grocery stores do get stressed by having another store near their own, called supermarket or multitasking where the convenience stores fit. People say that this stress is due to the fear, above all, of closing their stores when they can not cope with the competition and all its implications. It does not coincide with Acuña (38) in terms of the satisfaction they feel for having their own business, working for them and not for others, as well as for the income obtained, but in that the work days are really extensive up to twelve daily hours every day of the week as well as Javela, Tarquino, Duque, Cruz (34).

Pando (11) reveals that he found that being single was associated with the psychosocial factor related to worse working conditions, and that with the Burnout Syndrome, the only association found was between the mixed shift and the emotional exhaustion dimension, data corroborated in this work. On the other hand, Aranda et al (23) in their study with a small sample for convenience of grocery workers had already shown matching association data, variables such as working hours a week were associated with emotional exhaustion and with the global burned dimensions, as well as the lack of satisfaction with their acquired economic gain and the stress caused by that acquired gain was associated with emotional exhaustion.

CONCLUSIONS

The little literature published about this working group, called “grocery stores”, the “corner store”, “neighborhood stores” or “microbusinesses”, makes it difficult to analyze and discuss the results obtained; However, the already derived ones are sufficient to manifest the latent concern for improvement in order to achieve a better quality of life.

Among some recommended suggestions, and as Hernandez says (39) “options should be created based on knowledge, innovation and technology, which allow to offer better services, better quality, continue within the market, and compete with other businesses, including convenience stores”.

Do not forget that grocery stores are usually a family business, from which the whole family is supported, but that can also be a source of employment, tranquility and protection.

Funding: Universidad de Guadalajara. Conflict of interests: None to declare.

REFERENCES