“Burnout and Food Safety”: Aims, Significance, and Findings

Purpose

In their article Burnout and food safety: Understanding the role of job satisfaction and menu complexity in foodservice, Silva et al. (2021) aim to analyze the relationship between job motivation, job satisfaction, burnout, and food safety practices. The authors emphasize two main objectives of the research: first, to measure the job motivation, job satisfaction, menu complexity, and level of burnout of foodservice employees; second, to “verify the relationship between these factors and food safety practices” (Silva et al., 2021, p. 2).

Significance

This research is significant because there is currently little empirical evidence analyzing the relationship between job satisfaction and food hygiene violations. Previous studies have investigated the effects of training and education to reduce food hygiene violations by food service employees. However, other potentially more important factors such as employee satisfaction and menu complexity have not been explored (Silva et al., 2021). This gap in the literature is even more significant given the frequency and severity of foodborne illnesses worldwide (Silva et al., 2021). Hence, the research aims to explore a critical issue both from normative and empirical perspectives.

Literature Review

In the literature review section, the authors review the existing literature in four aspects and present their hypotheses. First, they discuss the importance of food security by emphasizing the scale of foodborne outbreaks and the urgency to address them (Silva et al., 2021). The second section gives brief information on the types of motivation and the definition and importance of job satisfaction (Silva et al., 2021). The authors also provide their first hypothesis:

• Job motivation increases the job satisfaction of food service workers. The third section explores burnout syndrome and job complexity. It also formulates three other hypotheses:
  • Burnout reduces the job satisfaction of foodservice employees;
    • Menu complexity increases the burnout of food service workers and reduces job motivation;
    • (Silva et al., 2021). Lastly, the authors review food safety practices and present the other two hypotheses:
      • Burnout and menu complexity can increase the number of food safety violations;
      • Job satisfaction can reduce the number of food safety violations (Silva et al., 2021). Thus, the literature review section elaborates on the importance of the topic, provides basic definitions of the terms, and presents hypotheses.

Findings and Conclusion

The authors found that workers in the restaurants with more complex menus had a higher level of burnout, and hence, food safety violations were higher in these restaurants. In return, safety violations harmed the job motivation of workers (Silva et al., 2021). Meanwhile, higher job motivation positively affected job satisfaction, and personal burnouts damaged job satisfaction (Silva et al., 2021). Hence, the results supported all hypotheses except for 4a that stated that job satisfaction and burnout could impact food safety.

Evaluation

The article provides a valuable contribution to the existing literature by analyzing the potential influencing factors on food safety. As mentioned above, given the criticality of the topic of food safety, the article is beneficial. Moreover, the piece is particularly relevant in the current global context of increased awareness about mental health issues, including burnout and their effect on productivity. The paper also conducts quality quantitative data with a substantial sample size (n=202), which strengthens the credibility of the research (Silva et al., 2021). Hence, the topic’s normative importance and the research’s empirical qualifications ensure that the investigation is valuable and well-investigated. Nevertheless, it is essential to remember that food hygiene violations are affected by the interplay of different factors, not limited to employee motivation, satisfaction, and menu complexity. Apart from investigating limitations that the authors outlined, future research can also conduct a comparative analysis to compare which factors have the highest or lowest impact on food safety practices.

Reference

Silva, C. T., Hakim, M. P., Zanetta, L. D. A., Pinheiro, G. S., Gemma, S. F., & da Cunha, D. T. (2021). Burnout and Food Safety: Understanding the role of job satisfaction and menu complexity in foodservice. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 92 (102705).