Employees who exercise moderately feel less emotionally exhausted and more personally satisfied at work than their less active co-workers, a new University of Michigan study found. Researchers at the U-M School of Kinesiology wanted to understand the relationship between physical activity and workplace burnout, says Michele Marenus, a former doctoral student whose adviser was the study’s principal investigator, Weiyun Chen. Chen is an associate professor of applied exercise science and director of the Physical Activity & Health Laboratory, where the research was conducted.
The study was part of a major research project led by Marenus at the PAHL. The study’s implications extend to workplace dynamics such as team engagement, turnover, morale and the “subtler yet impactful phenomenon called ‘quiet quitting,'” the researchers wrote. Their research did not directly examine quiet quitting, a term that was recently coined to describe employees who put in the minimum required effort at work, but do not resign.
The root cause is thought to be burnout, which is characterized by three primary symptoms: extreme fatigue, a sense of doubt and disengagement toward work, and feelings of inadequacy and unproductiveness. The researchers surveyed 520 full-time employees about their physical activity and workplace burnout. They divided the sample into low-, medium- and high-activity groups, then looked at differences across the three subscales of the burnout inventory: emotional exhau.