Skip to Content

Article

How Leadership Behaviors Impact Employee Well-being

Healthy, energetic, and focused employees are both more effective and more engaged than tired, stressed, and distracted employees. Much of the onus lies on the employee to maintain and improve their own well-being by eating healthy foods, being active, and getting enough sleep each night. Yet, work factors also have a big impact on employee well-being, and organizations can play a critical role by fostering a work environment that supports well-being and better employee experiences. A key component for achieving a healthy work environment is leadership. Recent research indicates leaders play a critical role in improving their employee’s well-being by decreasing emotional exhaustion – a key component of burnout experienced by 77% of US employees.

Emotional exhaustion is something most of us have experienced at one point or another to some degree.  It is a depletion of energy and the wish that we did not have to go back to the dreaded grind of work the next day. Despite feeling drained, a person experiencing emotional exhaustion will often find it hard to sleep. The resulting insomnia leaves their mind unable to perform even basic functions like concentrating on tasks and remembering information. If experienced long enough physical symptoms may emerge such as headaches, chest pain, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath, as well as serious psychological health issues such as anxiety and depression.

Emotional exhaustion is unpleasant for an individual, and important to address for that reason alone. However, emotionally exhausted employees are also a serious detriment to the functioning of an organization. Research reports that emotionally exhausted employees are less committed to their organizations, perform worse, engage in less helping behaviors for their supervisors and the organization as a whole, are more likely to report looking for employment elsewhere, and thus are more likely to quit. Despite the negative repercussions for both the individual and the organization, 70% of employees report that their organizations are not doing enough to prevent emotional exhaustion and the subsequent burnout it creates. So how can an organization seek to reduce the experience of burnout or emotional exhaustion more specifically?

Leaders can have help reducing emotional exhaustion by focusing on providing three specific work ‘resources’.

Role clarity

Answering the question: What do you want me to do?

A follower should never be left wondering what they are supposed to be doing when they get to work every morning. It is critical for leaders to set clear and well-defined expectations for their employees in terms of what their work role entails. This can include the tasks at hand, the time frames, the outputs, or really anything relating to help clearly define the employee’s role and responsibilities.

Predictability

Answering the question: How is what you want me to do changing from what I was doing before?

Our world is constantly changing, and work, including role responsibilities, is not immune to this. Leaders must ensure that when changes arise in the responsibilities of an employee that these changes are communicated clearly and in a timely manner. If not, an employee may be left to feel powerless and overwhelmed. Employees can adapt and succeed when changes are communicated well as it enables an employee to feel a sense of control and manageability of the tasks – or rather a ‘can do attitude’ when detours arise.

Meaningfulness of work

Answering the question: Why does it matter?

If employees are going to wake up, get out to bed, and go to work every day they want to understand the greater purpose beyond a paycheck. Using their broader knowledge base of organizational goals and strategy, a leader can illuminate this purpose, or meaning, to their team by delegating tasks that are challenging, interesting, and important to the larger goals of the organization. While some menial tasks may be necessary part of a job, the majority of a person’s role should be defined in terms of its bigger purpose in the grand scheme of things whether that be for the organization or even society as a whole.

Leaders who clearly answer these questions are less likely to have emotionally exhausted employees.

If organizations care about improving the wellness of their employees – which they should – then they must play their part in accomplishing this goal. The solution to employee well-being will not come from merely providing employees with greater resources and training to help themselves. It also depends as much on leaders creating a supportive work environment that minimizes the stress and emotional exhaustion caused by role uncertainty, ambiguity, and meaninglessness.

About SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite helps you completely reinvent the entire employee experience. You can shift from traditional HR transactions to engaging, end-to-end experiences, using intelligent technology to make each interaction simpler and more meaningful. And by linking employee feedback to operational data, you’ll understand what’s happening and why, so you can continuously deliver unexpectedly exceptional experiences that keep your business growing.

Back to top