THE EFFECT OF STRESS WORK-LIFE BALANCE AND JOB SATISFACTION ON ATTACHMENT WORK WITH JOB FATIGUE AS A MEDIATOR

Abstract

This study examines the effects of stress, work-life balance, and job satisfaction on work engagement, with burnout serving as a mediating variable among Operational Control Assistance (BKO) police officers deployed in Papua, Indonesia. Police officers assigned to conflict-prone operational areas are exposed to demanding working conditions that may influence their psychological well-being and organizational performance. Understanding the determinants of work engagement is therefore essential for improving both employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. This study employed a quantitative explanatory research design using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Data were collected from 222 BKO police officers through standardized questionnaires measuring work engagement, stress, work-life balance, job satisfaction, and burnout. The proposed structural model was evaluated using goodness-of-fit indices before testing the direct and indirect relationships among the study variables. The findings indicate that the proposed structural model adequately fits the empirical data. Stress, work-life balance, job satisfaction, and burnout were found to significantly influence work engagement. In addition, stress significantly increased burnout, whereas work-life balance and job satisfaction significantly reduced burnout. The mediation analysis further demonstrated that burnout played a significant role in explaining the relationships between the antecedent variables and work engagement, although the magnitude of the mediating effects varied across the examined relationships. These findings highlight burnout as an important psychological mechanism linking organizational and individual factors to employees' work engagement. This study contributes to the literature on industrial and organizational psychology by extending the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) framework to operational police officers working in high-risk environments. Practically, the findings suggest that the Indonesian National Police should strengthen stress management programs, improve work-life balance, enhance job satisfaction, and implement systematic burnout prevention initiatives to sustain work engagement and improve organizational performance among operational personnel.