Mitigating Employee Burnout through Servant Leadership: Evidence from Higher Education Institutions

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_24How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Employee Burnout; Servant Leadership; Empathy; Empowerment

Abstract

Higher education institutions are facing a major problem related to employee burnout that is caused by rising academic workloads, administrative requirements, research pressures, and standards for performance. From this standpoint, the role of leadership is very important for inspiring employee well-being and employee outcomes in the workplace. The study under observation focuses on the role of servant leadership for the reduction of employee burnout among the faculty members of higher educational institutions in Bangalore. Namely, the study examines the effect of servant leadership and its component parts (empathy, empowerment and ethical leadership) on employee burnout.

The type of research that is used in the study is descriptive and analytical research. Primary data were collected from 400 faculty from various college and universities of Bangalore by using structured questionnaire on the 5 point likert scale. Convenience sampling method was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results indicate that teachers have a medium level of burnout, with the most salient aspect being emotional exhaustion. The study also concludes that servant leadership is an effective leadership approach that helps to reduce employee burnout in higher education institutions. Empathy, empowerment, and ethical attitudes can boost faculty well-being, alleviate workplace stress, and improve the academic climate, all of which can be facilitated by the leadership of institutions. The results are relevant for educational leaders and policy makers wanting to enhance employee well-being and improve organizational effectiveness at the higher education level.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - J. Lydia Jemima
AU  - K. M. Anu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/06
TI  - Mitigating Employee Burnout through Servant Leadership: Evidence from Higher Education Institutions
BT  - Proceedings of the 18th National IQAC Conference (ICon 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 312
EP  - 322
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_24
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-618-5_24
ID  - Jemima2026
ER  -