Health-Oriented Self- and Employee Leadership in Virtual Teams: A Qualitative Study with Virtual Leaders

Abstract

Virtual teamwork as a new way of working is becoming increasingly prevalent in a growingly globalized and digitalized working environment. Due to the associated raise in health-related stress factors at the workplace and the central role of leaders in workplace health promotion, the aim of this study is to obtain initial findings on the use of health-oriented self- and employee leadership in virtual teams from the perspective of virtual leaders. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 13 virtual leaders by using the problem-centered interview method. The collected data were deductively and inductively evaluated and interpreted using the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. The results show that virtual leaders ascribed great value of health and showed great awareness in health-oriented self- and employee leadership. Physical activity and boundary management were particularly mentioned as health-oriented self-leadership behaviors. The majority of leaders described communication, building trust, support in boundary management and implementation of personal meetings as health-oriented employee leadership behaviors. In addition to social, technical, and personal factors, primarily organizational factors were mentioned as factors of influence in this context. For a more comprehensive understanding of health-oriented leadership, the inclusion of virtual team members in further research studies is necessary.

The Show Must Go On

“…Particularly regarding the pandemic, leaders should be aware that employees are exposed to specific risks. It is important that remote leaders too feel responsible for their followers' health (value), pay attention to health-related warning signals (awareness), and invite followers to inform them about their health risks at work (behavior; Efimov et al, 2020).…”

Virtual leadership in relation to employees' mental health, job satisfaction and perceptions of isolation: A scoping review

“…Furthermore, considering increased health risks of leaders (e.g., greater exhaustion or higher professional or quantitative overload) (Pangert and Schüpbach, 2011 ; Lohmann-Haislah, 2012 ; Stilijanow, 2012 ) and a significant association between leaders' health status and leadership behavior (Kaluza et al, 2020 ), it is recommended to investigate health-oriented self-leadership among leaders as well. Future studies should examine the impact of virtual leadership on leaders' health outcomes (see Efimov et al, 2020 ) as well as interdependencies between employees' and leaders' health status in virtual collaboration [e.g., by using health-oriented leadership measurement instrument by Franke et al ( 2014 )]. In this regard, future interventional research or experimental studies should investigate the relationship between health-oriented leadership and e-health literacy skills: What skills do leaders need in order to discuss health-related topics in virtual communication or to reduce employees' perceived isolation?…”

Human Resource Management in a Digital Environment

“…Though the degree of virtual teamwork can vary from face-to-face to fully mediated online collaboration across multiple locations, most organizational teamwork today is at least partly virtual (Rudolph et al, 2021). In virtual settings, it becomes more difficult for leaders to be aware of their employees' stress levels, as overtime and signs of strain can go unnoticed (Efimov et al, 2020;Kordsmeyer et al, 2020). Virtual teamwork can also feel isolating, and technology-mediated communication is prone to misunderstandings, increasing the risk of conflicts as a source of stress (Day et al, 2012;Rudolph et al, 2021).…”