Abstract
BackgroundResearch shows that leaders influence the health and well-being of employees, by being either a buffer or major source of employee’s work stressors. Various leadership behaviors and their relation to employee outcomes have been examined. Yet, a satisfactory explanation of how leaders’ behavior influences health has not been found. A new line of research investigates the construct of “health-oriented leadership”, that is, the health awareness of leaders towards themselves (“self-care”) and towards their employees (“staff-care”). It is hypothesized that this health-orientation has a direct effect on both leader’s and employees’ health, as well as an indirect effect mediated by their working conditions.MethodsData were derived from four company research projects, that involved employee and leader surveys on work, health, and well-being. The sample consisted of 50 teams, with 191 leaders and 604 team members. To test the relation between a leader’s self-care and his/her engagement, exhaustion, as well as staff-care, multiple regression analyses and mediation analyses were conducted. The relation between a leader’s staff-care, the team’s job resources and demands, and the individual employee outcomes engagement and exhaustion were tested with multilevel analyses.ResultsRegression analysis showed that the stronger a leader’s health-orientation towards him/−herself (“self-care”), the stronger was the health-orientation towards his/her employees (“staff-care”). A leader’s self-care was also associated with higher work engagement and lower exhaustion and this relation was mediated by his/her job resources and demands, respectively. Multilevel analysis showed that a leader’s staff-care was associated with employee work engagement and exhaustion, and that this relation was mediated by team-level job resources and demands, respectively.ConclusionsThe health-orientation of leaders relates to their own as well as their teams’ engagement and exhaustion, which is partly mediated by job demands and resources. Thus the construct of health-orientation may prove worthy of further exploration. For practical conclusions, this study provides support for researching not different leadership styles with very specific facets, but a general orientation towards health, which can be implemented into coaching and consulting sessions for organizations.
Highlights
Research shows that leaders influence the health and well-being of employees, by being either a buffer or major source of employee’s work stressors
All correlations between the mediators and outcomes revealed on both levels significant relations and directions that were expected
The first regression model examined the relation between leader self-care and leader engagement as outcome variable
Summary
Research shows that leaders influence the health and well-being of employees, by being either a buffer or major source of employee’s work stressors. Research was conducted on various leadership styles and behaviors and their relation to employee outcomes, such as work engagement, stress, and health. Zimber and Gregersen [7] conducted a metaanalysis with 42 publications that deal with the relationship between leaders’ behavior and the state of health and well-being of their employees. They found that in particular, transformational and employee-orientated leadership are considered to be beneficial to health. In the ICD-11, burnout syndrome is considered an occupational disease, which again underscores the importance of healthy work environments for organizations [13]
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