Felfe, Jörg

Health-oriented leadership (HoL) is vital for the improvement of health and an essential part of psychological risk management. However, the relevance of different antecedent factors is unknown. We used data from a Germany-wide online survey with N = 738 leaders. Referring to the JD-R model, we analyzed leaders’ demands and resources that facilitate or impede health-oriented leadership from a leader’s perspective. Moreover, we examined the relevance of contextual factors like branch, company size, and management span. Whereas results show only small differences for contextual factors, we found positive relationships between leaders’ resources, like autonomy and social support, and negative relationships with workplace demands (availability, multitasking) and HoL from a leader’s perspective. At the organizational level, HoL is positively linked to high-performance work practices and health-oriented HRM strategies. From a leader’s perspective, the findings provide evidence for the relevance of favorable working conditions and human resources practices for improving HoL as part of psychological risk management.

Leadership plays an important role in employee well-being. In light of a growing research interest in leaders’ resources as determinants of healthy leadership, it is not yet clear how leaders’ behavior regarding their own health (self-care) may trickle down to employees. Drawing on Conservation of Resources Theory and the model of Health-Oriented Leadership, this study tests two mechanisms through which employees may benefit from self-caring leaders: (a) through staff care, that is, concern for their employees’ health (improved leadership hypothesis); and (b) through a direct relationship between leaders’ and employees’ self-care (role-modeling hypothesis). In turn, both staff care and employee self-care would relate positively to employee health. Multilevel path models based on a sample of N = 46 supervisors and 437 employees revealed that leader self-care was positively related to leader-rated staff care at Level 2, which was positively related to employee-rated staff care at Level 1. In turn, employee-rated staff care was positively related to employee health. The findings support the improved leadership hypothesis and underline the importance of leader self-care as a determinant of healthy leadership.

This paper sheds further light on the contextual boundaries in the relationship between high-performance work practices (HPWPs) and employee wellbeing. In particular, we analyze whether this relationship is moderated by health-oriented leadership behavior (i.e., staff care) which describes the extent to which leaders value, are aware of, and protect their followers' health at work. Our analyses are based on employee data (N = 1,345) from Germany, covering two points in time. Findings show positive associations between HPWPs and happiness-related (i.e., engagement, commitment) and health-related (i.e., general health, physical health complaints, mental health complaints, strain) wellbeing outcomes. The positive relationship between HPWPs and employee wellbeing is weaker the more employees experience leadership behavior in terms of staff care. Thus, our results provide further evidence for a substitutive or compensatory effect between HRM and leadership.