Heart rate variability and burnout risk among healthy employees in jobs involving interaction with others

Interaction-intensive work is characterised by high social demands, stressful situations, and emotional regulation. It can therefore be a risk factor for high level of work-related stress and burnout. Chronic stress has been linked to changes in autonomic regulation, as reflected by heart rate variability (HRV), an objective indicator of stress. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between burnout risk and HRV in healthy employees engaged in high-interaction work. A cross-sectional analysis was conducted on 202 working adults (including nursery teachers, bank clerks and medical assistants) with an average age of 41.1 ± 11.4 years (median 40.4 years, range 22-63 years). Burnout risk was assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-GS). Participants were divided into three groups according to their burnout risk level. HRV was analysed comparatively across these three groups using 24-hour recordings as well as a 6-hour analysis during the day and at night. An increased risk of burnout was observed in 5.4% of the participants in the total sample. Significant differences in HRV between the three groups with and without varying levels of burnout risk were primarily observed in the 24-hour interval (including heart rate: p = 0.039; LF n.s., HF n.s. and LF/HF: p = 0.009 in each case) as well as in the 6-hour daytime interval for the MeanRR (p = 0.002), but not at night. Correlation analyses revealed predominantly weak associations between HRV and burnout dimensions. The strongest associations were observed in the daytime interval (e.g. MBI total score with LF ρ = -0.271; p < 0.01 and with pNN50 ρ = 0.271; p < 0.01). Age in particular proved was found to be a significant influencing factor in the analysis of variance, with large effect sizes on several HRV parameters (e.g. pNN50 η² = 0.178; RMSSD η² = 0.173). Even the first results suggest that work-related stress and burnout factors in healthy employees engaged in interactive work may be reflected in subtle changes in autonomic regulation, further analysis have shown that the effects are mainly driven by age and gender, two factors that have an impact on HRV. This shows that it is important to analysis not only autonomic regulation along e.g. by measuring HRV, but also to consider influencing co-factors that have an impact on them. On total, in the examined group it was not able to show a different between persons with high and low interactive work in subtle changes in autonomic regulation.