Introduction: Burnout is an advanced state of stress and emotional exhaustion is its core. This syndrome is associated with physical, emotional and mental fatigue as a consequence of long term exposure to difficult conditions. This study was conducted to determine the effect of physical activity on emotional exhaustion of employees in 2013.

 Methods: This semi-experimental study was carried out on 200 employees in AghGhala, the north of Iran, in 2013. Individuals were selected by convenience sampling. Data gathered by a 3-part questionnaire involved demographic characteristics, Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) and Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Paired t-test, Man-Whitney and Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.05 with spss16 software.

 Results: The results showed that 57.5% of the studied individuals were male that 91% of them were married. Average of their age was 38.52 ± 7.86 years, 60 percent of the employees had no or low physical inactivity. Mann-Whitney test showed that there was a significant relation between emotional exhaustion and gender (p=0.02). The Pearson test showed that there was a significant relation between emotional exhaustion and physical activity (P =0.03).

 Conclusion: The results showed that increase of physical activity can enhance people's capacity to cope with everyday problems. It is also one of the ways of reducing stress and emotional exhaustion of employees in workplace. Therefore to have better work performance, it is necessary to detect effective factors.