In this article, we draw upon the notion that employees’ work characteristics are an important pathway through which leaders influence employee well-being and propose a theoretical framework that integrates perspectives on leadership, occupational stress, and job design. Based on this integrative approach, we developed the health- and development-promoting leadership behavior questionnaire (HDLBQ) for assessing job demands emanating from and job resources provided through the leader. Validation of the measure in German, French, and English using an overall sample of 2,934 employees demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. An examination of the factorial structure revealed three higher-order factors: demanding, development-oriented, and support-oriented leadership. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis indicated structural equivalence across the three language versions of the HDLBQ. Correlations with employee well-being were moderate, and the HDLBQ explained unique variance in employee well-being beyond that explained by transformational leadership. Suggestions for applications of the HDLBQ and approaches to enhance employee well-being at the workplace are discussed.

PurposeThis study of leaders and followers working in day-care centers aims to use a multilevel perspective on supportive leadership to examine its role in linking workload at the leader level and emotional exhaustion at the follower level. Integrating theoretical work on social support with conservation of resources (COR) theory, leaders' workload is proposed to be positively related to followers' feelings of emotional exhaustion through constraining the enactment of supportive leadership.Design/methodology/approachMultisource survey data from 442 followers and their leaders from 68 teams were collected to test the hypotheses.FindingsMultilevel analyses showed that leader workload was negatively related to followers' perception of supportive leadership, which, in turn, was positively related to followers' levels of emotional exhaustion. Leader workload was indirectly and positively related to follower emotional exhaustion via supportive leadership.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides initial support for the idea that work contextual factors at the leader level create boundaries for the extent to which leaders may provide support to their followers and draws attention to the accountability of leaders' work contextual factors for followers' well-being.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that organizations must not focus narrowly on training leaders on how to benefit followers but should also aim to optimize leaders' levels of workload to enable them to act in a supportive manner.Originality/valueBy considering both the receivers (i.e. followers) and providers (i.e. leaders) of support simultaneously, we take a crossover approach to COR theory and acknowledge that work contextual factors at higher organizational levels may spread to employee well-being at lower levels of the organization.

Although evidence reveals severe effects of sexual harassment on care workers’ mental health, there is a scarcity of studies that investigate care workers’ experiences of sexually inappropriate behavior from patients or clients. One reason for this lack of research is that validated measures that assess different types of sexual harassment experienced by employees working with patients or clients are lacking. In this study, we seek to establish a conceptual framework for investigating extraorganizational sexual harassment in healthcare work. Based on this theoretical framework, we developed and validated a measure for assessing sexually harassing behaviors from patients or clients. Data were gathered from heterogeneous samples of employees working in a variety of settings in healthcare. To evaluate the factorial structure of the measure, we conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using a calibration sample (N = 179) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a cross-validation sample (N = 305). The construct validity of the measure was demonstrated by investigating relationships with indicators of care workers’ mental health. EFA revealed three factors, namely, nonverbal, verbal, and physical acts of sexual harassment. Examination of the measure comprising 14 items revealed acceptable internal consistencies and substantial correlations with indicators of care workers’ mental health. This study provides a useful and sound measure for assessing sexual harassment from patients or clients and paves the way for the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework for the assessment of sexual harassment. Furthermore, it facilitates future investigations of risk factors for sexual harassment and protective factors helping healthcare workers cope with sexual harassment from patients or clients.

The aim of this study is to obtain a better understanding of the association between the frequency of nurses’ exposure to workplace aggression from patients and their levels of burnout. In particular, we seek to shed light on the role of the availability of follow-up counseling in organizations after critical incidents in mitigating the adverse relationships between physical and verbal aggression and nurses’ burnout. A total of 582 nurses reported how frequently they had experienced physical and verbal aggression from patients in the last 12 months and whether they had the opportunity to receive follow-up counseling in their organization. In addition, nurses rated the extent to which they experienced each of the three dimensions of burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment). The results showed that both physical and verbal aggression were substantially related to the burnout dimensions. Furthermore, we found that the availability of follow-up counseling in organizations attenuated the relationships between physical aggression and all three burnout dimensions. While we found that the availability of follow-up counseling moderated the relationship between verbal aggression depersonalization, the moderating effects were not significant for emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment. The findings indicate that the availability of follow-up counseling might help minimize the adverse impact of exposure to aggression from patients on nurses’ mental health.

No abstract