THE EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND WELL-BEING

THE EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP ON EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND WELL-BEING

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LinkedIn Article Written By

Andrew Omagbetse Olukpe??- MSc Student

Daniel Chukwuebuka Okafor - MSc Student

Lynda Olubunmi Adeyanju - MSc Student

Michael Ehiedu Agboifoh???- MSc Student

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MSc Safety, Health and Environmental Management

Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science

University of South Wales

Introduction

Imagine a workplace where employees are happy to come to work, they feel safe, identify with, and consider their colleagues, supervisors, and manager as part of one big happy family working together to progress as a community; this is achievable through the coordination of leadership, workers’ engagement, and well-being. It's no secret that good leadership is required for the success of any organisation but then when we begin to unpack what a good leadership entails, we can quickly sense that it's not only about making good decisions for the company, giving orders, and raking in profits, it goes much deeper than that; leadership is also about followership (Wong and Law, 2002) or in this case, employees. Employees are the heart and soul of every organisation. They are the ones that gets their hands dirty and does the heavy lifting hour after hour to bring about the productivity that brings profits to the organisation. In the words of Tim Besley who is a leading economist and member of the Monetary Policy Committee says; “there is an increasing understanding that people are the source of productive gain, which can give you competitive advantage (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009) .There are many definitions of leaderships, with still no one general definition, the New Oxford Dictionary of English (2020) defines leadership as "the action of leading a group of people or an organization"; "the state or position of being a leader" which sounds fit for this purpose. Similarly, there still is not a universal definition for employee engagement and the best definition provided by David MacLeod: “This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential” (Engage for Success, 2015). One of the most popular definitions of wellbeing is that by Waddel and Burton (2006, p4 ) is the “subjective state of being healthy, happy, contented, comfortable and satisfied with one’s quality of life. It includes physical, material (financial), social, emotional (‘happiness’), and development & activity dimensions.” The purpose of this essay is to shine a light on workers’ engagement, well-being and how they are affected by leadership.

Relationship Between Leadership, Engagement and?Well-Being

It is worthy to mention on a sidenote that a leader is not always or necessarily a manager or a supervisor (Bertocci, 2009; Stanley,2006; Toor, 2011), although it can be if an individual possesses both qualities of a leader and a manager. More organisation managements are increasingly taking active steps to focus on employee engagement in the workplace especially as it has been linked closely to helping them achieve their goals and objectives, fosters employee’s well-being, employee performance and overall organisational performance and growth (Gupta and Sharma, 2016). Highly engaged employees are more productive and have an overall better well-being than disengaged employees who are likely to conduct unsafe acts that can affect not only their well-being but the well-being of other individuals in the workplace and customers at large. APPENDIX 1 provides a list of questions that can be used to gauge the level of engagement of employees in an organization. There are various levels of employee engagement to an organization and figure 1.0 below shows a pyramid of the different level of employee engagement in an organization while figure 2.0 shows the effort in which they put into “rowing” the organization forward.?

The 2009 MacLeod Review identified leadership (management and line managers) as two out of the core enablers of employee engagement while the other two being employee voice and organizational integrity (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009). Good management leadership can create an organisation with a highly engaged workforce, this can be done through a combination of different streams of engagement and well-being strategies; Table 1: Five Domains of Well-being shows examples of well-being initiatives from while engagement programmes can be cost effective strategies like having a theme day at work to an informal company outing and wellness activities and investments on employees like training, certification, and sponsoring tuition. Studies shows that engaged employees are more likely to put in discretionary efforts towards their work (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009); that is, going over and beyond what is required of them without expectation of any form of renumeration.?

Discretionary efforts from employees are something that an organisation cannot command or put a price on, as this is at the "discretion" of the employees to give it at their choosing; and when the employees are “not happy” or in good health in terms of well-being, then most likely no discretionary efforts would be offered by the employees.?An engaged employee can be successfully identified by the characteristics of an engaged employee as shown in Figure 3.0 below.

Organisations with faulty or toxic leadership have a higher rate of disengaged employees who are generally referred to as “mood hoovers” and are usually clock watchers who are not productive and, in some cases, contribute directly or indirectly to the reduction of productivity in the organisation. Sankowsky's (1995) studies establishes that destructive leadership tend to harm their followers’ mental well-being. Expanding further; CIPD, (2022a) survey shows management style as third leading cause of stress at work, with the first been workload and volumes of work; other studies shows that the organisational management (leadership) values, processes and structures?is far reaching and creates a work environment that have a great degree of influence that shapes the employees' engagement levels and well-being (Maslach et al., 2001; CIPD, 2022b)); ?especially in organisations where employees’ feels a disconnect, lack of support, feedback, autonomy and little to no?participation in decision from management leadership can create a high chance for job burnout. Employee well-being and engagement is at the core of the organisation, and management should consider this as the way to achieving its targets on a day-to-day basis and not just a one-off programme; it is about taking a different approach to the business, to create an organisation where the employees can proudly identify themselves citizens of the organisation. Though human resources (HR) are in a unique position to orchestrate employee well-being and engagement programmes in a systemic manner for the organisation with proper provision of resources from senior management; especially as CIPD data shows that only 51% (about half) of organisation management plans a strategy for employee well-being (CIPD, 2022b). The cooperation and support of every leader, especially line managers, supervisors, team leaders and down to "informal leaders" in the organisation to participate in active employee well-being and engagement practice together with the human resources professionals. With this the foundation to achieving a truly healthy workplace in an organization has been established. As shown in ?the well-being pyramid in Figure 4.0:?The Well-Being Pyramid below, leadership, culture and people management are the basic foundation to the creation of employee wellbeing and engagement, which in turn creates a healthy workplace in an organization.

BENEFITS OF GOOD LEADERSHIP, ENGAGEMENT AND WELLBEING IN AN ORGANIZATION

It has been identified that the workplace has effect on the level of engagement, health and well-being of its workers since the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion stated, “work and leisure should be a source of health for people” (World Health Organization, 1986) and this is influenced by the type of leadership that operates in an organization, this is essentially the organizational culture of a workplace (Dickson-Swift et al.,2014).?Leadership is diverse and can be defined differently depending on what is set to achieve. (Winston & Patterson, 2006) define leadership as someone or a group of people who control the affairs, impact, and have effect on his followers. These followers vary in their attributes, skills, roles, responsibilities, and talent. However, a leader can influence his followers either positively or otherwise and this will in turn influence their level of engagement at work and wellbeing. Like leadership, engagement can be established and identified differently with no consistency in its definition which is dependent on the origination of the concept. To achieve a healthy workplace, an employer must ensure that certain things are used as bedrock to achieve a fully integrated well-being method; this can be linked to culture, leadership and people management (CIPD,2016).??Many studies show a strong correlation between levels of employee engagement and business performance as indicators. Engagement therefore has been shown to have positive implication on work execution and accomplishment within time frame as well as individual outcomes such as motivation and wellbeing and this has been linked to good leadership (Madden & Bailey, 2017; Bakker et al 2008, Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). Good leadership in an organization promotes a healthy and safe workplace thereby producing engaged workers and for this reason, well-being is improved. This in turn enhances workers to put discretionary efforts at work and hence there is profit maximization. An organization with good leadership establishes strategies that promote workers’ health, ensures that the working environment is safe and healthy and prioritizes the welfare of staff (Legislation,1974). This has a positive and significant influence on workers’ lifestyle and hence their engagement, well-being and performance and output. The key indicator for an Engaged organization is having committed staff, increased innovation, reduced staff sickness rate, fewer conflicts, lower accident rates, fewer resignations, job involvement, staff retention, job satisfaction and improved performance which has been linked to good leadership and well-being because without these two, all these would be difficult to achieve (MacLeod & Clarke, 2009). Additionally, engagement and well-being is a combined efforts of the employer, employee and the society (ENWHP,2020) and this has been linked to benefit employees by?improving?happiness at work, enhancing job satisfaction, improved physical health and healthy feeding habit, stress reduction (Rongen et al.,2013). The organization also benefits as it increases participation in the workplace, reduces staff turnover, reduces healthcare and insurance cost improve their reputation of being a good and reputable workplace and inspires a well-managed health and safety plan (Dickson-Swift et al.,2014).

DRAWBACKS OF BAD LEADERSHIP, ENGAGEMENT AND WELLBEING IN AN ORGANIZATION

Leadership has a significant influence on employee engagement and well-being since everything a leader does has an impact on the corporate culture, either positively or negatively. A worker's perception of their job changes during the course of their employment with an organization due to this culture, which also encourages engagement (Babbitt, 2021) Hence, bad leadership will definitely hamper an organization structure and growth.

Bad leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, abuse of power, ?motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and the mission performance (Oberlander, 2013). As shown in Figure 4.0:?The Well-Being Pyramid, leadership is the bedrock of an organisation, this greatly affects the organisation culture and people management; which then determines employees' well-being and in turn determines employees' engagement. According to (Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser, 2007) destructive leadership are usually characterised by a selfish orientation and considers the needs of the larger social group as secondary while displaying behaviours like domination, intimidation, one-way communication and manipulation rather than encouragement, persuasion and commitment to followers (employees) and these usually leads to a compromise on the employee well-being and quality of life, career derailment and a detract from main purpose which can lead to negative organisational outcomes. ?This Leader has little or no regard for employee’s engagement and wellbeing or the culture of the organization. This is detrimental to the short- and long-term goals of an organization. Employees are undermined when negative leadership is used repeatedly. Thus, this leads to unattractive workplace cultures, toxic working attitudes, employee segregation, increasing loss of high-performing workers, employees unwilling to put in discretionary efforts and poor staff retention. An organisation with destructive leadership creates a higher number of disengaged employees and this can be as a result of employees finding less and less meaning in their work especially where they feel undervalued, overworked and underpaid for the value of work; disengaged workforce can lower productivity,?increase in absenteeism and presenteeism (coming to work when ill or unfit for work (CIPD, 2022a)), job burnout which can lead to poor mental health issues and individual well-being, clock watchers, intent to quit and a high staff turnover rate which can cost the organisation financially directly and indirectly. According to the HSE statistics as shown in Figure 5.0 below; stress, Depression or anxiety is the leading cause of work-related illness; and?destructive leadership styles has been cited as a cause for workers depletion of mental health and work-life balance (Chung and Li, 2018; Winn and Dykes, 2019).

Conclusion

Employee engagement and workers well-being are worth investing in by an organization management leadership; as it creates a long-term return on investment and business sustainability which gives a fun, healthy and positive environment for employees to work in, where employees are happy come to work and not just to laze about counting down to the very minute, they can escape from the workplace, but they take pride in being productive even with minimal supervision and or when unsupervised.

APPENDIX 1

How to Measure Employee Engagement with the Gallup's Employee Engagement Q12? Survey (Inc, 2021). According to Gallup, these are the twelve employee essentials that a manager can use to determine employees’ engagement level:

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1.???I know what is expected of me at work.

2.???I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.

3.???At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4.???In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5.???My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.

6.???There is someone at work who encourages my development.

7.???At work, my opinions seem to count.

8.???The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.

9.???My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.

10.?????????I have a best friend at work.

11.?????????In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.

12. ?This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

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