BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS Employee mental health is a hot-button topic of our times. Here, Dr Nazahah Rahim explains how it can be positively impacted by good leadership. With additional input from Martin Knapp , professor of health and social care policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science M ental wellbeing is important not only to individual employees, but also to employers. Poor mental health can have adverse e ects on work performance and overall productivity. Mental wellbeing can be seen as a sub-component of wellbeing and can be defined as the absence of mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety, according to psychologists Gerben Westerhof and Corey Keyes.
is some information on those recommended leadership styles that are helpful when it comes to humanising oneself, as well as others. Transformational leadership Transformational leadership plays a significant role in enhancing employee mental wellbeing, as it is commonly and positively associated with elements such as higher job satisfaction, less stress, higher work engagement and less burnout. This is because transformational leadership involves a process that creates a positive image and delivers a sense of belonging to employees, which causes them to perceive that the organisation supports them. With this leadership style, a strong relationship between employees and the organisation can be established. This should lead to a positive and healthy working environment that is suitable for the mental development and wellbeing of employees. Situational leadership As humans, leaders need to be flexible and use adaptable ways of leading. This flexibility provides employees with more freedom to take risks, challenge themselves in new ways and think outside the box. Situational leadership takes place when the leader of an organisation moulds his or her leadership style to fit the development level of the followers. This is also referred to as a ‘contingency approach’ since the e ectiveness of this style is contingent on how leaders pair their style of leadership with the right setting and alter it to suit the situation, as per Sophie Heatley’s article from global employee benefits and rewards platform, Perkbox. With this leadership style, employees feel more supported and therefore will be more motivated in doing their jobs. Work-related stress can also be eliminated. Supportive leadership Supportive leadership is another leadership style that is found to be closely connected to health and wellbeing in the workplace. This is because it has elements of nurturing, caring, understanding each other
Mental illness and other conditions associated with poor mental wellbeing are sometimes less ‘visible’ in some sense, but can interfere with an individual employee’s ability to be fully productive in the workplace, or even participate in family life. As a result, organisations today are hiring wellbeing managers to manage and support employees’ mental health. Employers are increasingly placing more of the responsibility on managers to support employees’ health and wellbeing, but of course they are not health experts. Nonetheless, the right management practices and leadership styles can help to achieve this objective. One of the approaches that can help to break down barriers to employee mental wellbeing is by humanising the various elements in the workplace to make them friendlier and more approachable. Humanising certain work processes makes things more civilised, refined and understandable, thus creating a workplace culture that is easier for humans to relate to and appreciate. Humanising oneself or others is not an easy task considering the limitation and rigidity of most organisational processes, which can pose significant challenges for business leaders. An improved understanding of the importance of the right leadership practices and styles is required to improve employee mental wellbeing, while at the same time creating an environment that is people-oriented. This is because employees are not machines that are meant to be programmed in a certain way, taken for granted or mistreated – they are humans. In an e ort to promote employee mental wellbeing, here
36 | Ambition FEBRUARY 2024
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