Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs)

EAPs are employer-sponsored benefit programs that provide employees with free access to various resources, such as short-term counseling and referrals. They are designed to help employees deal with personal and/or work-related problems, including those involving their mental health. Evidence suggests that EAP-provided counseling services can be effective in helping employees overcome mental health struggles, as shown by reductions in presenteeism, absenteeism, life satisfaction, and workplace distress (Attridge et al., Reference Attridge, Sharar, DeLapp and Veder2018; Joseph et al., Reference Joseph, Walker and Fuller-Tyszkiewicz2018). However, despite EAPs offering viable support for employees, only about 4% of employees use them (Attridge et al., Reference Attridge, Cahill, Granberry and Herlihy2013). A lack of EAP utilization may be due to a lack of awareness of their existence, a lack of understanding of how to use them, and/or a failure to grasp how they can help those who experience mental health challenges (Dimoff & Kelloway, Reference Dimoff and Kelloway2018). Thus, in addition to instituting EAPs that offer mental-health-supportive resources (e.g., counseling), senior leaders should develop and implement communication strategies to promote available EAP-related resources to employees. They should also consider measuring employees’ satisfaction with EAP features and soliciting ways to improve its offerings and accessibility (e.g., via smartphones).

Sufficient Health Insurance Coverage for Mental Health Expenses

National healthcare programs often fall short of providing people with the professional mental health support they need. For example, Canada’s universal healthcare system covers most physician and hospital-related expenses. Still, it does not provide coverage for services provided by (nonmedical) mental health professionals (e.g., psychologists, social workers), nor does it cover prescribed medication for mental health treatment (Mulvale & Hurley, Reference Mulvale and Hurley2008). The 2020 Canada Life and Health Insurance Association report suggests that 80% of working Canadians are protected by private insurance plans offered by their employer, professional association, or union. These insurance plans are offered to employees as part of their compensation and rewards package to help pay for expenses not covered by universal healthcare. However, insurance coverage for mental health services in Canada and in the United States is often limited in terms of the breadth of services covered and the maximum expenses that can be claimed per year (Mulvale & Hurley, Reference Mulvale and Hurley2008; Reinert et al., Reference Reinert, Nguyen and Fritze2020). In the United States, health insurance coverage has increased, yet coverage for mental health services has remained limited. According to a Mental Health America report (Reinert et al., Reference Reinert, Nguyen and Fritze2020), 45% of Americans receive inadequate mental health service coverage from their employer.

The Kaiser Family Foundation report on employer health benefits (2020) suggests that employees disproportionally use mental-health-related services not covered by their employer-provided health insurance, causing them added financial and psychological strain (Barry et al., Reference Barry, Clarke, Petersen and Jenkins2019). Insurance coverage for mental-health-related services varies depending on job type, industry, and the organization’s financial position. According to the 2020 Sanofi Canada Healthcare Survey, the current median dollar amount for mental-health-related services, such as counseling and therapy, is $1,011 per year. Yet, 68% of Canadians have an annual maximum coverage for mental health services of less than $1,000 per year (Sanofi, 2020). In comparison, Manulife offers its employees $10,000 per year for mental health services, and employee’s spouse/dependents can utilize this benefit as well (The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, 2021). To prevent their employees from seriously struggling with their mental health, senior managers should determine how their employees’ health insurance can be made to sufficiently cover mental-health-related expenses.

Mental Health Training and Promotion Programs

By implementing training programs for managers (see Chapter 12 in this book) and employees (see Chapter 13) on matters relating to mental health, senior managers convey their genuine commitment to maintaining a supportive work setting. Of note, manager training programs expressly designed to give them the knowledge and skills to help direct reports seriously struggling with their mental health have only recently been developed. Examples include the four-hour RESPECT program (Milligan-Saville et al., Reference Milligan-Saville, Tan, Gayed, Barnes, Madan, Dobson and Harvey2017) and the three-hour Mental Health Awareness Training program (MHAT; Dimoff et al., Reference Dimoff, Kelloway and Burnstein2016; Dimoff & Kelloway, Reference Dimoff and Kelloway2018). Each has been shown to be beneficial in randomized controlled trials. Despite some differences in content, both aim to bolster managers’ mental health knowledge (e.g., key features, risk factors, warning signs, the effects of the most common serious mental health problems or illnesses, the role of leaders as sources of support for struggling employees) and improve their skill at supporting their employees’ mental health (e.g., how to promote mental health in the workplace, reduce workplace stressors, approach and assist employees showing signs of struggling). Evidence of the effectiveness of these programs has been shown among participating managers in terms of improved skill at recognizing employees’ mental health struggles, greater self-efficacy in supporting mental health, increased sharing of information on mental health and mental-health-supportive resources (e.g., EAP), and being more supportive of employee mental health issues. Positive effects have also been shown among trained managers’ employees, such as being more willing to use mental-health-supportive resources and being less absent due to sickness). Considering these findings, senior leaders need to ensure that mental health training needs are evaluated annually and that required training is offered.

Selection and Promotion Policies That Emphasize Interpersonal Skills

Historically, organizations have largely focused on evaluating candidates’ technical (“hard”) skills when deciding whether to promote them into management positions. However, interpersonal (“soft”) skills, such as being courteous, flexible, personable, friendly, and empathetic, have increasingly been recognized as crucial and often lacking among managers and employees (Bedwell et al., Reference Bedwell, Fiore and Salas2014; Clarke, Reference Clarke2016; Robles, Reference Robles2012). There is a looming belief that employees quit their bosses rather than their jobs. This can be due to their immediate manager severely lacking in interpersonal skills. Strong interpersonal skills make the difference between successful and unsuccessful managerial leadership (Bedwell et al., Reference Bedwell, Fiore and Salas2014). Senior managers should therefore implement selection and promotion policies that give much greater attention to interpersonal skills. That said, it is not necessarily evident which specific behaviors exemplify such skills, making it difficult to know exactly what to assess (measure) among candidates in a selection or promotion context. We further elucidate the specific nature of these behaviors when discussing how immediate managers can support their employees’ mental health.

Destructive Leadership behaviors

Kelloway et al. (Reference Kelloway, Sivanathan, Francis, Barling, Barling and Kelloway2005) proposed that destructive (“poor”) leadership can be either passive or active (“abusive”) in nature. Passive destructive leadership denotes a deficiency in the competencies required for a leadership role and frequent failure to live up to one’s leadership responsibilities. Laissez-faire leadership and the more passive type of management-by-exception (Bass & Avolio, Reference Bass and Avolio1994) typify passive leadership. Behavioral examples include showing a lack of caring of what happens, avoiding taking responsibility, being indecisive, failing to provide employees with feedback and/or reward their contributions, and being satisfied to wait for someone else to step up to a challenge (Avolio, Reference Avolio2011). Conversely, active destructive leadership involves being overly punitive or aggressive, such as yelling at, insulting, belittling, and/or threatening employees with job loss or pay cuts (e.g., Tepper, Reference Tepper2000). Such passive and active forms of destructive leadership delineate concrete types of behavior that immediate managers must undoubtedly refrain from displaying, lest they seriously impair their employees’ mental health (e.g., higher levels of burnout, depression, counterproductive work behavior; Mackey et al., Reference Mackey, Frieder, Brees and Martinko2017).

Constructive Leadership behaviors

Constructive leadership behaviors remain somewhat more elusive. This is at least partly attributable to the popularity of the charismatic–transformational leadership (e.g., Bass & Avolio, Reference Bass and Avolio1994; Conger & Kanungo, Reference Conger and Kanungo1987) and leader–member exchange (Graen & Uhl-Bien, Reference Graen and Uhl-Bien1995) models of leadership, which have dominated organizational scholarship since the 1980s. Despite significant associations reported between measures of those leadership constructs and indicators of employee mental health (see Chapter 5 for an overview), each model has received considerable criticism. We discuss some of these criticisms below, as well as research on other (less popular) conceptualizations of constructive leadership that have offered more useful insights.

The “Full Range” Model of Leadership. Avolio (Reference Avolio2011) suggested that the “full range” model of leadership involves transformational and transactional styles of leadership, both of which are distinct from passive leadership (e.g., laissez-faire leadership; see above). Transformational leadership has been said to be more effective/positive than the more managerial and less stimulating style of transactional leadership (Avolio, Reference Avolio2011; Bass & Avolio, Reference Bass and Avolio1994). Yet, transformational leadership (and similar leadership conceptualizations involving charisma) has attracted the fiercest criticism. Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (Reference Van Knippenberg and Sitkin2013) provided a detailed explanation of its major shortcomings. Perhaps most damning is the fact that the commonly used measures of charismatic–transformational leadership (e.g., the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire [MLQ]; Bass & Avolio, Reference Bass and Avolio1990) fail to yield factor analytic results consistent with the multidimensional conceptualizations they aim to capture (e.g., Bycio et al., Reference Bycio, Hackett and Allen1995). For instance, transformational leadership purportedly involves at least four distinct dimensions, including idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass, Reference Bass1985). However, correlations among dimension scores are so strong that researchers often sum across them and use a single “transformational leadership” score. With little to no idea how to convincingly measure charismatic–transformational leadership, we are ill equipped to offer immediate managers concrete guidance on how they can display such leadership, let alone explain why and in which circumstances such behaviors would be particularly beneficial to employees’ mental health. The implication is not that charismatic–transformational leadership does not exist, only that more research is necessary to clearly understand the distinct behaviors it truly involves. To that end, van Knippenberg and Sitkin (Reference Van Knippenberg and Sitkin2013) proposed that scholars isolate elements of charismatic–transformational leadership (e.g., how leaders communicate an inspiring vision) without being confined by commonly used dysfunctional frameworks and operationalizations.

Transactional leadership would involve the use of contingent rewards (i.e., rewarding employees when they meet performance expectations) and the more active (timely) type of management-by-exception (i.e., monitoring employees and taking corrective action to prevent serious difficulties when their behavior deviates from expectations). Such behaviors seem relatively more concrete and easily distinguishable than those supposedly comprising transformational leadership.

The use of contingent rewards merits particular attention when considering its potential positive effects on employees’ mental health. An immediate manager using such rewards clarifies the reward that will be given for meeting designated performance standards, makes sure employees receive appropriate rewards when they achieve performance targets, and/or expresses his/her satisfaction when they do a good job. The importance of using contingent rewards is not to be underestimated. Judge and Piccolo’s (Reference Judge and Piccolo2004) meta-analytic review revealed that their use relates to employee job satisfaction and motivation as much as, if not more than, transformational leadership. People generally want to feel valued or appreciated for their contributions, making contingent rewards an important way of satisfying socioemotional needs. In fact, a large German study showed that immediate managers’ use of contingent rewards can relate quite strongly to employees’ mental and physical health (Zwingmann et al., Reference Zwingmann, Wegge, Wolf, Rudolf, Schmidt and Richter2014).

It is important to distinguish between formal contingent rewards, which usually have financial implications for employees (e.g., performance-based pay increases, promotions) and informal ones (e.g., expressing satisfaction to well-performing employees). Informal rewards lie outside the bureaucratic machinery of the organization. They can be equally if not more effective at satisfying employees’ socioemotional needs, such as their need to belong, be cared about, be valued, feel competent, have personally meaningful work, have autonomy in how they do their work, and have influence over their broader social context (Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan2000; Maslow, Reference Maslow1943; McClelland, Reference McClelland1987; Michaelson et al., Reference Michaelson, Pratt, Grant and Dunn2014; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995). Work experiences that better satisfy such needs can be seen as more intrinsically motivating (Deci et al., Reference Deci, Connell and Ryan1989; Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan1985; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995) and hence more conducive to better mental health (Caesens et al., Reference Caesens, Bouchat and Stinglhamber2020; Marin-Garcia & Bonavia, Reference Marin-Garcia and Bonavia2021). Examples of informal rewards helping to satisfy socioemotional needs include explaining to more highly performing employees why their contributions are so valuable and appreciated (to increase how meaningful they consider their work; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995), praising them for a job well-done (to give them a greater sense of competence, of feeling valued; Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan1985; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995), giving them more latitude in choosing the best way to carry out their work (to give them greater autonomy; Deci & Ryan, Reference Deci and Ryan1985; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995), and soliciting as well as implementing their ideas for how the unit should operate (to help them realize they have impact; Spreitzer, Reference Spreitzer1995). Immediate managers who value their employees’ mental health would do well to consider using such informal rewards alongside those integral to their organization’s formal reward policies (Gilbert & Kelloway, Reference Dimoff and Kelloway2018).

Of course, making employees’ work more intrinsically motivating does not only have to be done as an informal reward for their work contributions. Organizational job redesign interventions aiming to enrich the characteristics of employees’ jobs by making them less stressful and more intrinsically motivating have been shown to bolster employee mental health according to various indicators (Holman & Axtell, Reference Holman and Axtell2016; Holman et al., Reference Holman, Johnson, O’Connor, Diener, Oishi and Tay2018). We urge immediate managers to involve their employees in determining how to make their jobs as intrinsically motivating as possible (Sorensen & Holman, Reference Sorensen and Holman2014). At least some of the behaviors associated with empowering leadership would be useful to consider (Arnold et al., Reference Arnold, Arad, Roades and Drasgow2000).

The Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) Model of Leadership. For decades, LMX research has addressed dyadic (one-on-one) relational dynamics between managers (leaders) and their direct reports (members). Despite its impressive size, this literature has been heavily criticized. Most recently, Gottfredson et al. (Reference Gottfredson, Wright and Heaphy2020) pointed out that there remains little consensus on best defining the LMX construct. Does it describe the differentiation of relationships and/or exchanges between managers and their different subordinates, the quality of the exchange and/or relationship between a manager and a subordinate, or some combination of the above? Definitional difficulties make it hard to develop a broadly endorsed LMX measure with compelling construct validity. Moreover, Gottfredson and colleagues argue that LMX measures do not adequately capture the notion of exchange, which appears in the title of the construct and is at the core of LMX theory. It can also be difficult to easily distinguish them from other measures, such as proposed antecedents and outcomes of LMX. However it is defined, the LMX construct has much more to do with describing the nature of manager–employee relationships than with delineating a comprehensive set of specific leadership behaviors. As such, neither LMX theory nor its measures appear particularly useful for clearly understanding the range of distinct behaviors that immediate managers should use to support their direct reports’ mental health.

Consideration and Initiating Structure. Over half a century ago, leadership studies conducted at the Ohio State University identified and distinguished between two fundamental leadership styles, initiating structure and consideration (Fleishman, Reference Fleishman, Dansereau and Yammarino1995; Stogdill, Reference Stogdill1950). As interest in charismatic–transformational models of leadership gained popularity in the 1980s, organizational scholars eventually lost interest in initiating structure and consideration styles of leadership, condemning them as outdated and of little validity or utility. Yet, a meta-analytic review of those two rather discernable types of leadership behavior revealed that they both meaningfully relate to important outcomes, such as employee satisfaction, motivation, and group-organization performance (Judge et al., Reference Judge, Piccolo and Ilies2004). They also differ in the strength with which they relate to those outcomes, with consideration being more strongly related to employee satisfaction and motivation, and initiating structure more strongly related to group-organization performance.

Initiating structure denotes the degree to which immediate managers clarify and organize their role and those of their employees, are concerned with task accomplishment, and establish clear patterns and channels of communication (Fleishman, Reference Fleishman, Fleishman and Hunt1973). Examples include letting employees know what is specifically expected of them, making sure they understand the manager’s role in the group, deciding what will be done and how it will be done, assigning specific tasks to employees, and scheduling the work to be done (Stogdill, Reference Stogdill1963). Such a style of leading is clearly focused on ensuring employees have the necessary knowledge to accomplish their tasks, without necessarily trying to make them feel good or enjoy their work (although one does not have to preclude the other – more on that below). It is conceptually germane to active management-by-exception, although the latter only focuses on correcting employee mistakes. By clarifying roles and ways of achieving success, initiating structure can potentially reduce strain-inducing role ambiguity (Lee & Schuler, Reference Lee and Schuler1980) and help employees reap the (contingent) rewards of achieving higher levels of performance. As such, use of initiating structure can support employees’ mental health, assuming it is used in ways that they consider helpful. Excessive use of initiating structure (used when employees do not need it) has been associated with unfavorable employee attitudes (Lambert et al., Reference Lambert, Tepper, Carr, Holt and Barelka2012). Giving structure in ways that ignore employees’ needs could explain why that style of leadership, when compared to leader consideration, is less strongly related to employee satisfaction and motivation. For instance, employees will likely be frustrated (if not infuriated) when their managers insist on work methods that they consider overly cumbersome or bureaucratic. If those methods are warranted, then immediate managers could avoid frustrating their employees by providing a clearer rationale for insisting upon them.

Consideration involves showing concern for employees, respecting them, and looking out for their personal welfare. It therefore focuses on trying to satisfy employees’ socioemotional needs, such as those noted earlier (e.g., to be cared about, to be valued, etc.). Unsurprisingly, consideration seems relatively more consequential than initiating structure to employees’ mental health, as suggested by differences in their relationships with employee satisfaction and motivation (Judge et al., Reference Judge and Piccolo2004). Examples include doing little things to make it pleasant for employees to be members of the group, doing personal favors for group members, finding time to listen to them, putting their suggestions into action, being willing to make changes, and giving advance notice of changes (Halpin, Reference Halpin1957; Stogdill, Reference Stogdill1963). Such actions seem to be manifestations of empathy (i.e., the capacity and willingness to understand others’ perspectives and experience emotions similar to theirs; Cuff et al., Reference Cuff, Brown, Taylor and Howat2016) and altruism (i.e., selflessness and concern for others; Costa et al., Reference Costa, McCrae and Dye1991). The examples provided above also imply that being considerate of employees means being attuned to their socioemotional needs, whether they are exhibiting clear signs of poor mental health or not. We revisit this point later when discussing the social support literature.

There are some conceptual parallels between leader consideration and the full range leadership model discussed earlier. The use of contingent rewards evokes a considerate way of leading, in that the manager is concerned with satisfying employees’ needs (e.g., for recognition). As such, use of contingent rewards could be considered an example of leader consideration, not simply a ploy to coax the highest level of performance out of employees. In fact, research has shown that the use of contingent rewards is more indicative of managers’ efforts to nurture good relationships with their staff than of their efforts to ensure tasks are accomplished (Yukl, Reference Yukl1999). Also, leader consideration resembles the transformational leadership dimension of individualized consideration, although questionnaire items purportedly capturing that dimension make it unclear how consideration is actually shown (e.g., “Treats me as an individual rather than just a member of a group,” “Treats each of us as individuals with different needs, abilities, and aspirations”; Bass & Avolio, Reference Bass and Avolio1990).

Leader consideration and, to some degree, initiating structure imply the provision of social support. Below, we delve into the workplace social support literature, especially work addressing supervisor-provided support, which further elucidates ways that immediate managers can benefit their employees’ mental health.

Supervisor-Provided Social Support. Social support refers to psychological or material resources provided to a focal individual (e.g., the employee) by partners in some form of social relationship (e.g., the immediate manager; Jolly et al., Reference Jolly, Kong and Kim2021). It has been linked to both positive (e.g., work engagement) and negative (e.g., burnout) manifestations of mental health (Sarti, Reference Sarti2014; Viswesvaran et al., Reference Viswesvaran, Sanchez and Fisher1999). Despite the social support literature’s limitations (e.g., fragmented conceptual development, inconsistent definitions and operationalizations, lack of fit between studied supports and stressors; Jolly et al., Reference Jolly, Kong and Kim2021), it has helped distinguish between at least two broad types of socially supportive behavior that immediate managers (and others) can display: emotional and instrumental support.

Whereas emotional support involves trying to satisfy employees’ socioemotional needs by showing empathy, caring, love, and trust, instrumental support does so by providing more tangible resources (e.g., time, schedule flexibility, task-specific knowledge) that employees can use to address a specific problem or challenge (House, Reference House1981). Although other general types of social support have been proposed (e.g., informational, appraisal; House, Reference House1981), emotional and instrumental support have been those most often studied (Jolly et al., Reference Jolly, Kong and Kim2021).

Examples of emotional support include paying attention to employees’ feelings, making the time to listen to their work-related or personal problems, showing an interest in their opinions, trying to make their job as interesting as possible, saying things that would raise their self-confidence, helping them move up the ranks, and speaking highly of them when they have significantly contributed to the group (Caplan et al., Reference Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison and Pinneau1975; Eisenberger et al., Reference Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison and Sowa1986; Peeters et al., Reference Peeters, Buunk and Schaufeli1995; Vinokur et al., Reference Vinokur, Schul and Caplan1987). The last example denotes the use of a contingent reward, further reinforcing our earlier point that such rewards can be used to show consideration for employees’ socioemotional needs.

Examples of instrumental support include finding ways to give them more time when they feel overloaded (extending a deadline and/or reducing workload), helping them when they need a special favor, granting a reasonable request for changes in their working conditions, showing them how to more easily or successfully accomplish tasks they are struggling with, and giving them advice on how to handle specific challenges (Eisenberger et al., Reference Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison and Sowa1986; Peeters et al., Reference Peeters, Buunk and Schaufeli1995). The latter two examples evoke the initiating structure style of leadership. Thus, task-focused leadership does not necessarily imply a lack of consideration of employees’ socioemotional needs. Providing structure that they appreciate will presumably be taken as a sign of consideration. It therefore seems of limited value to focus on the distinction between consideration and initiating structure when it comes to employees’ mental health. Instead, we suggest that managers hold a broader view of leader consideration that involves emotional and instrumental types of social support, the latter of which can involve the provision of structure that employees endorse.

The examples of support given above reveal that employee distress is not a necessary condition to provide either emotional or instrumental types of support. Some measures of social support (e.g., most of the items in the commonly used Caplan et al. [Reference Caplan, Cobb, French, Harrison and Pinneau1975] measure) imply that struggling employees are those who need support, which is misleading. For example, although employees may not be in distress, they could still very much appreciate a manager who shows interest in their opinions, tries to make their job more interesting, or provides guidance on how to overcome specific challenges at work. Unless they are experiencing serious mental health problems, employees will not necessarily make their socioemotional needs obvious or apparent. Thus, to help them have the best possible mental health (beyond an absence of mental illness), immediate managers should regularly consider how their employees could be perceiving and reacting to workplace circumstances, be mindful of their more subtle nonverbal cues (e.g., those signaling disappointment, frustration), and proactively engage them in conversations meant to explore their specific needs and determine how they could be satisfied.

The workplace social support literature has also examined how immediate managers can lend support to employees on issues that transcend the workplace. Examples include “family-supportive supervisor behaviors” and “healthy leadership,” each of which is salient to employees’ mental health.

Family-Supportive Supervisor Behaviors (FSSBs). These behaviors aim to help employees more successfully manage the intersection of their work and family lives. Employees who experience greater conflict between both domains tend to report poorer mental health (Amstad et al., Reference Amstad, Meier, Fasel, Elfering and Semmer2011; Greenhaus et al., Reference Greenhaus, Allen, Spector, Perrewé and Ganster2006; Shockley & Allen, Reference Shockley and Allen2013). FSSBs can involve emotional support (e.g., being willing to listen to employees’ problems in juggling work and family demands), instrumental support (e.g., helping employees with work–family scheduling conflicts), as well as role-modeling (e.g., displaying how to balance work and family roles) and creative work–family management (e.g., soliciting and implementing employee suggestions that would facilitate work–family balance; Hammer et al., Reference Hammer, Kossek, Yragui, Bodner and Hanson2009). Although similar in nature to previously discussed examples of considerate leadership (e.g., emotional support, instrumental support, and soliciting/implementing employees’ ideas), FSSBs explicitly focus on helping employees more successfully deal with competing work and family role demands. This probably explains why they relate more strongly than supportive supervision of a more general nature to reduced work–family conflict (Kossek et al., Reference Kossek, Pichler, Bodner and Hammer2011). FSSBs have also been shown to relate more strongly than perceived managerial effectiveness to higher levels of employee work engagement and subjective well-being, particularly among employees with dependent care responsibilities and no family-friendly benefits available (Matthews et al., Reference Matthews, Mills, Trout and English2014). Several studies have reported positive relationships of FSSBs with employees’ mental and physical health (for a review, see Crain & Stevens, Reference Crain and Stevens2018). The seemingly unique value of FSSBs to employees’ capacity to successfully juggle work and family demands highlights the idea that managers must provide employees with the specific type of support they need to overcome their particular challenge (i.e., support-stressor match; Jolly et al., Reference Jolly, Kong and Kim2021; Viswesvaran et al., Reference Viswesvaran, Sanchez and Fisher1999). We revisit this point further on.

Healthy leadership. Several models of healthy leadership have been introduced over the past decade to address the health-specific effects that leaders (immediate managers) can have on employees’ physical, mental, and social well-being. These models have sought to overcome the vagueness with which more “established” models of leadership (e.g., transformational, LMX) address employee health (Franke et al., Reference Franke, Vincent, Felfe, Bamberg, Ducki and Metz2011). Among the various models proposed (for a review, see Rudolph et al., Reference Rudolph, Murphy and Zacher2020), two have received significantly more research attention: “health-promoting” and “health-oriented” leadership.

Health-promoting leadership purportedly involves having a supportive leadership style, organizing health-promoting activities, and developing a health-promoting workplace (Eriksson et al., Reference Eriksson, Axelsson and Axelsson2011). However, its measurement emphasizes the types of considerate leadership behavior described earlier in this chapter over behaviors explicitly addressing employees’ health. For example, most of the 21-item Health-Promoting Leadership Conditions questionnaire (HPLC; Dunkl et al., Reference Dunkl, Jiménez, Šarotar Žižek, Milfelner and Kallus2015) captures efforts to provide emotional and instrumental types of social support. Only three items mention health (e.g., “My leader takes care that the health of all employees is promoted”). Although this measure’s item content reinforces the value of emotional and instrumental types of supervisor-given social support to employee (mental) health, it does little to clearly distinguish so-called health-promoting leadership from previously studied considerate leadership behaviors.

In contrast, health-oriented leadership is more explicitly health-focused. It is said to encompass leaders’ health-promoting communication and design of working conditions, as well as their values toward, and awareness of, their followers’ health (Franke & Felfe, Reference Franke, Felfe, Badura, Ducki, Schröder, Klose and Macco2011). Its operationalization (Franke et al., Reference Franke, Felfe and Pundt2014) involves manager self-ratings and employee-provided ratings of the immediate manager’s self-care (i.e., health-oriented self-leadership) and staff-care (i.e., health-oriented leadership of employees). Self-care and staff-care would both involve the manager’s health-oriented awareness (i.e., awareness of own health and of that of staff members), values (i.e., prioritizes own health and that of staff members), and behavior (i.e., makes decisions that benefit own health and that of staff members).

Advocating the use of two rating sources (managers and their direct reports) can be useful for examining rater agreement and for improving health-oriented communication between managers and their staff. The distinction between managers’ self-care and staff-care is particularly interesting in that it stresses the idea that managers would be ill positioned to care for their employees if they lack the capacity or desire to care for themselves (Franke et al., Reference Franke, Ducki and Felfe2015).

A few studies report that ratings of managers’ health-oriented leadership relate to indicators of employee mental health, including less irritation and fewer somatic complaints, as well as lower levels of burnout and depression (Franke & Felfe, Reference Franke, Felfe, Badura, Ducki, Schröder, Klose and Macco2011; Santa Maria et al., Reference Santa Maria, Wolter, Gusy, Kleiber and Renneberg2019), and seem to do so above and beyond the variance explained by transformational leadership (Franke et al., Reference Franke, Felfe and Pundt2014). Despite some limitations (e.g., several items failing to capture concrete behaviors, some items confounding support with outcomes of support), evidence to date suggests that healthy leadership could be of unique benefit to employees’ mental health.

Summary of Insights from Constructive Leadership Research. The literature addressing constructive forms of leadership provides several insights into how immediate managers can sustain or even enhance their employees’ mental health. First, in addition to avoiding displays of destructive leadership, being considerate of employees’ socioemotional needs appears key. Consideration can involve the provision of emotional and instrumental types of social support. Emotional support involves communicating to employees that they are cared about, valued, respected, and trusted. This can involve a variety of behaviors (see examples above), including the use of contingent rewards, assuming those rewards satisfy socioemotional needs. Instrumental support involves providing employees with resources that directly help them overcome specific challenges. Examples include providing more time, money, and/or people to accomplish a task, as well as providing structure (e.g., information, guidance) on how to overcome a specific challenge.

Second, immediate managers can benefit their employees’ mental health by taking care of their own mental health. This is exemplified by research on FSSBs (“role-modeling”) and on health-oriented leadership (“self-care”). Given the near ubiquitous challenge of having conflicting work and nonwork role demands and its negative association with mental health (Allen et al., Reference Allen, French, Dumani and Shockley2020), modeling how to effectively balance work and nonwork aspects of one’s life could be viewed as part of the broader notion of manager self-care. It is plausible that managers who look after their own mental health would experience less stress that would otherwise curtail their capacity to support their employees (Harms et al., Reference Harms, Credé, Tynan, Leon and Jeung2017). Also, social learning theory (Bandura, Reference Bandura1977) suggests that observing how managers look after their own health could give employees greater comfort and/or motivation to do the same for themselves.

Third, consistent with the “matching hypothesis” (Viswesvaran et al., Reference Viswesvaran, Sanchez and Fisher1999), it seems important to ensure that employees receive the support that is most salient to their needs. For instance, FSSBs have been shown to explain variance in employees’ work–family conflict above and beyond general supervisor support, and health-oriented leadership would explain incremental variance in employee mental health beyond the effects of transformational leadership (though for reasons unknown given the challenges with current conceptualizations and operationalizations of transformational leadership – see above). This further supports our earlier suggestion that managers must take the time to become keenly aware of their employees’ specific challenges, whether they are work-related or not, if they are to provide them with the most beneficial support. What remains unanswered is whether the types of supervisor support discussed so far are sufficient to help employees maintain the best possible mental health. Are additional or more specific supportive behaviors needed to achieve this aim?