The Relationship Between Occupational Stress, Burnout, and Perceived Performance: The Moderating Role of Work Regime

Globalization, digital transformation, and organizational changes have led to significant transformations in the world of work, substantially increasing workloads, which can result in high levels of stress and burnout among employees. The main objective of this study was to investigate the association between occupational stress and perceived performance and whether this relationship was mediated by burnout. In addition, we sought to understand whether the work regime (in-person, hybrid, and remote) moderates the relationship between occupational stress and burnout. The sample for this study consisted of 325 participants working in organizations based in Portugal. The data collection procedure was non-probabilistic, intentional, and snowball-type. This is an exploratory, correlational, and cross-sectional study. The results indicate that only the dimension ‘stress with users’ has a negative and significant association with performance. On the other hand, the dimension ‘stress with career and remuneration’ has a positive and significant association with performance. The dimensions ‘stress with users’ and ‘stress with workload’ have a positive and significant association with performance. Only ‘stress with workload’ has a positive and significant association with exhaustion. Distancing has a total mediating effect on the relationship between stress with users and perceived performance. The work regime has a significant effect on distancing. The work regime moderates the relationship between ‘stress with working’ conditions and exhaustion. Given the current work regimes, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, it can be concluded that, among the dimensions of occupational stress, the most critical is stress with working conditions.