Employee well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic
How can leadership support employee well-being when working from home in the Covid-19
pandemic?
Course: Leadership
Grade: 7,5
, ABSTRACT
The current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts various aspects of a human’s life
including the need for a large number of employees to work from home. This poses a
challenge to employee well-being. Research has shown that leadership is a key determinant of
employee well-being. Therefore, this review looks at the moderating influence of leadership,
specifically different leadership styles, on the relationship between working from home under
COVID-19 and employee well-being. Well-being is negatively influenced by working from
home through the three antecedents structure and routine, social interaction and work-life
interference and positively by the antecedent autonomy. The study also found that the
leadership styles LMX, shared leadership, transformational leadership and relationship-
oriented leadership can moderate the negative effects. Furthermore, the article identified
contributions of the HR departments to facilitate these moderating effects. Main suggestions
for leaders and HR departments include, but are not limited to, open, frequent and transparent
communication, regular check-ups, educating, supporting and offering training. Additionally,
leaders should help in creating routines and schedules. At the same time, leaders, and HR
departments likewise, should offer the autonomy to tailor one’s way of working. Offering
information on the influence of leadership on employee well-being when working from home
during the pandemic will provide valuable knowledge for leaders, organizations and scholars
likewise. This review especially aims to provide insights for the organization that was
interviewed, proposing this topic as their current most relevant and important leadership
challenge.
2
, 1. INTRODUCTION OF THE ORGANIZATION
The interviewed organization is one of Europe's largest premium magazine publishing
companies. The company is headquartered in Germany and has over 9.000 employees. Since
2013, all publications have been clustered into eight areas, so-called communities of interest.
Within these communities of interests, both print and digital content is created cross-media.
The tasks within the company are highly varied, with professions within the company ranging
from Creative Producer, Online Marketing Manager, HR Generalist, System Engineer IT
Security to Editeur. The HR-department is divided into multiple sub-departments, of which
one is personnel and organizational development. The interviewee is the leader of this
department, she has been working with the company for almost 15 years.
Due to the great variety of tasks within the company, the individual teams within the company
vary in size, hierarchical characteristics and working arrangements. These differences in
working arrangements include that some of the teams regularly worked from home over the
last years, other teams never made use of working from home before. Nevertheless, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, all employees, where possible, were and are required to work from
home. Trying to keep the anonymity and privacy of the company, no further information of
the company and teams can be shared.
All employees have at least one specific point of contact, a leader, somebody that is
concerned with the employee’s development and well-being. Therefore, supporting and
developing the team leaders is a topic that concerns the entire organization and is
consequently of great relevance for the department of personnel and organizational
development.
3
, 2. CENTRAL QUESTION
Due to the uprise of the Covid-19 pandemic, the most relevant topic and challenge for the
interviewed company regarding leadership is how leaders can support employee well-being.
Because of the pandemic, there has been a forced change in work, which posed new
challenges to the teams, the employees and the leaders. Employees were and still are required
to work from home. For many of the employees this was their first time working from home
(Kramer & Kramer, 2020). Additionally, they were confronted with a multitude of other
challenges concerning work from home. According to researchers, the pandemic and by that
working from home impacts various aspects of a human’s life, including mental health
(Achenbach, 2020), work schedules and routines, relationships, family life (Brenner, 2020)
and working environment (Thompson, 2020) resulting in challenges for personal well-being.
For the interviewee, the topic of employee well-being includes topics like health awareness,
structuring the day working from home, finding and creating good routines and looking after
one's psychological resources. Leaders need to give individual attention to their employees
and support them for whatever they are currently dealing with. The interviewee furthermore
highlights that employee well-being means that leaders need not only look out for their
employees’ health but also for their own.
The interviewee moreover states that at the beginning of the pandemic, everybody was more
or less focused on economic factors. The main goal of everybody was to get through this
situation with as little as possible economic losses. Therefore, the focus was less on employee
well-being. She also mentions that all the employees had a “Together we can do this”
mentality. Now, however, this mentality is suffering, because there is no longer an end in
sight.
The negative effects of the pandemic on employee well-being are also corroborated by
Molino et al., (2020). These effects are alarming for companies since employee well-being is
negatively correlated to employee turnover and positively to performance (Page & Vella-
Brodrick, 2009). To make matters even more important expectations are that working from
home will be lasting even after the pandemic (Molino et al., 2020). Therefore, minimizing the
4
How can leadership support employee well-being when working from home in the Covid-19
pandemic?
Course: Leadership
Grade: 7,5
, ABSTRACT
The current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic impacts various aspects of a human’s life
including the need for a large number of employees to work from home. This poses a
challenge to employee well-being. Research has shown that leadership is a key determinant of
employee well-being. Therefore, this review looks at the moderating influence of leadership,
specifically different leadership styles, on the relationship between working from home under
COVID-19 and employee well-being. Well-being is negatively influenced by working from
home through the three antecedents structure and routine, social interaction and work-life
interference and positively by the antecedent autonomy. The study also found that the
leadership styles LMX, shared leadership, transformational leadership and relationship-
oriented leadership can moderate the negative effects. Furthermore, the article identified
contributions of the HR departments to facilitate these moderating effects. Main suggestions
for leaders and HR departments include, but are not limited to, open, frequent and transparent
communication, regular check-ups, educating, supporting and offering training. Additionally,
leaders should help in creating routines and schedules. At the same time, leaders, and HR
departments likewise, should offer the autonomy to tailor one’s way of working. Offering
information on the influence of leadership on employee well-being when working from home
during the pandemic will provide valuable knowledge for leaders, organizations and scholars
likewise. This review especially aims to provide insights for the organization that was
interviewed, proposing this topic as their current most relevant and important leadership
challenge.
2
, 1. INTRODUCTION OF THE ORGANIZATION
The interviewed organization is one of Europe's largest premium magazine publishing
companies. The company is headquartered in Germany and has over 9.000 employees. Since
2013, all publications have been clustered into eight areas, so-called communities of interest.
Within these communities of interests, both print and digital content is created cross-media.
The tasks within the company are highly varied, with professions within the company ranging
from Creative Producer, Online Marketing Manager, HR Generalist, System Engineer IT
Security to Editeur. The HR-department is divided into multiple sub-departments, of which
one is personnel and organizational development. The interviewee is the leader of this
department, she has been working with the company for almost 15 years.
Due to the great variety of tasks within the company, the individual teams within the company
vary in size, hierarchical characteristics and working arrangements. These differences in
working arrangements include that some of the teams regularly worked from home over the
last years, other teams never made use of working from home before. Nevertheless, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, all employees, where possible, were and are required to work from
home. Trying to keep the anonymity and privacy of the company, no further information of
the company and teams can be shared.
All employees have at least one specific point of contact, a leader, somebody that is
concerned with the employee’s development and well-being. Therefore, supporting and
developing the team leaders is a topic that concerns the entire organization and is
consequently of great relevance for the department of personnel and organizational
development.
3
, 2. CENTRAL QUESTION
Due to the uprise of the Covid-19 pandemic, the most relevant topic and challenge for the
interviewed company regarding leadership is how leaders can support employee well-being.
Because of the pandemic, there has been a forced change in work, which posed new
challenges to the teams, the employees and the leaders. Employees were and still are required
to work from home. For many of the employees this was their first time working from home
(Kramer & Kramer, 2020). Additionally, they were confronted with a multitude of other
challenges concerning work from home. According to researchers, the pandemic and by that
working from home impacts various aspects of a human’s life, including mental health
(Achenbach, 2020), work schedules and routines, relationships, family life (Brenner, 2020)
and working environment (Thompson, 2020) resulting in challenges for personal well-being.
For the interviewee, the topic of employee well-being includes topics like health awareness,
structuring the day working from home, finding and creating good routines and looking after
one's psychological resources. Leaders need to give individual attention to their employees
and support them for whatever they are currently dealing with. The interviewee furthermore
highlights that employee well-being means that leaders need not only look out for their
employees’ health but also for their own.
The interviewee moreover states that at the beginning of the pandemic, everybody was more
or less focused on economic factors. The main goal of everybody was to get through this
situation with as little as possible economic losses. Therefore, the focus was less on employee
well-being. She also mentions that all the employees had a “Together we can do this”
mentality. Now, however, this mentality is suffering, because there is no longer an end in
sight.
The negative effects of the pandemic on employee well-being are also corroborated by
Molino et al., (2020). These effects are alarming for companies since employee well-being is
negatively correlated to employee turnover and positively to performance (Page & Vella-
Brodrick, 2009). To make matters even more important expectations are that working from
home will be lasting even after the pandemic (Molino et al., 2020). Therefore, minimizing the
4
