Leadership as a Resource for Keeping Employees with Mental Illness in Their Jobs

Abstract

One of the biggest work-related challenges of our time is mental illness and related unemployment, creating costs of around 3.5% of GDP in Europe alone. We build on the job demands-resources model to investigate leadership as a central resource for the job retention of employees with mental illnesses. Specifically, we analyze two channels of a leader’s influence: the relationship orientation s/he develops with a follower (i.e., leader-member exchange quality) as well as concrete leadership behavior targeted at (1) allowing more flexibility in day-to-day work (i.e., idiosyncratic deals), and (2) engaging in health-focused leadership intervention. We teamed up with a large social insurance to get access to a sample of employees with mental illness in the first labor market (N=223). We used survey methodology to measure job demands and the leadership predictors. Our objective outcome variable job retention was measured 18 months later to capture long-term effects. Hierarchical regression analysis and relative weight analysis are used to test our hypotheses. The hierarchical regression analysis reveals a significant relationship between all three leadership components and job retention, and a significant increase of explained variance in each step. An additional relative weight analysis demonstrates the equal importance of all three supervisor predictors. Thus, we conclude that the relationship quality, but also concrete leadership behaviors are likewise essential for the job retention of employees with mental illnesses.