*4.4. Discussion*

The COVID-19 pandemic showed an increase of stress levels and emotional-exhaustion experiences related to employees' occupational health, with higher absenteeism rates, loss of productivity, and increased healthcare consumption [7]. In fact, such impacts showed an important correlation with the loss of QWL and work ability [9].

The findings from this study show that, concerning the three dimensions of burnout assessment, i.e., emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and low effectiveness, approximately 44% answered that they were experiencing a condition of emotional exhaustion, feeling high stress/anxiety levels in the workplace. Almost 29% expressed feelings of cynicism, stating they had become more critical at work, both of colleagues and working conditions. For 30% of workers, feelings of being less effective at work and lacking satisfaction in job achievements occurred often.

Aligned with the results of prior research, COVID-19 not only impacted negatively on stress levels and QWL among frontline workers in the healthcare sector (physicians, nurses, and hospital workers) but also on other public servants [12,13]. Public servants closer to citizens, such as municipal workers, were suddenly forced to work remotely, changing public-sector work environments, raising contingent supervisory demands [12], and acting as a major stressor, increasing chronic anxiety, social isolation, and relationship difficulties [48].

The findings presented here confirm the burnout syndrome as a multidimensional phenomenon whose dimensions affect QWL in different ways. To understand how much of the measured effect of the independent variable (burnout dimensions) on the dependent variable (QWL) is attributable to motivating and economic mediator variables: contribution to productivity (in model 1) and satisfaction with salary (in model 2), we used mediation analysis. In model 1 (cf. Tables 2–4), the total effect comprises a direct effect pathway of the independent variables on the dependent variable (path C) and an indirect pathway of the independent variables on the dependent variable through the mediator (path A and path B). The first model analyzed the mediator effect of the contribution to productivity on the relation between the first dimension analyzed for burnout, i.e., emotional exhaustion, on QWL. Our results revealed a significant direct effect but found no significance in the mediating role of the worker feeling productive between this dimension of burnout and QWL. This mediating role had no significant effect concerning the second dimension, cynicism, or the third dimension, the feeling of low effectiveness, only showing important direct effects.

In contrast, model 2, assessing the mediation role of workers' contribution to productivity if associated with lower satisfaction with salary in the relation between municipal workers' burnout and decreased QWL (cf. Tables 5–7), our findings confirm the significant direct effects, for the first two dimensions of burnout on QWL but, as in model 1, found no significance in the mediating role of the worker feeling productive and satisfied with salary between this dimension of burnout and QWL. Nevertheless, and contrasting with the first dimensions of the burnout syndrome, the third one, i.e., the sense of low effectiveness, revealed not only important direct effects but highly significant indirect effects, which are in line with prior research highlighting the multidimensionality of burnout and the diverse effects on QWL.

The results of the present study are aligned with the literature on the determinants of QWL, which highlights the association between altered work conditions, including for public servants not directly working in health-related areas, and increased worker burnout exacerbated by the consequences for families' personal life and budget [47].
