Transformational leadership at the workplace aims to inspire, motivate, and encourage employees to perform in ways that bring positive impact to your organization.
More and more managers and employers are adopting this leadership style after seeing its impact on businesses.
But the problem is most of them tend to leave out this crucial area when implanting this new leadership style—employee health.
Effective transformational leadership should focus on the health of employees as well. Workers are a crucial asset for your business. And when they’re healthy, they’re happier and more productive.
Read on to discover how you can use transformational leadership to improve the health of your workers.
Transformational Leadership And Employee Health
Before we get into more details, it’s important to understand the link between transformational leadership and employee health.
A study was conducted to uncover the influence of transformational leadership and employee well-being. It involved surveying workers in several informational and communication technology companies in Germany and was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Researchers asked the workers questions relating to their employers’ leadership styles.
The questions were meant to determine the level of transformational leadership offered by various employers. They focused on key quantities such as the employers leading by example, giving their employees positive feedback for good performance, providing intellectual stimulation, and making all the workers feel like they’re part of the organization by letting them take part in crucial decision-making.
After analyzing the collected data, the researchers concluded that employees who showed a higher level of transformational leadership by their employers also scored well in their well-being reports. This effect seemed to maintain the trend even after the researchers controlled factors likely to affect employee health like education, age, and job strain.
Using the results of this study, the authors summarized that transformational leadership helps create a sense of trust and meaningfulness, challenges and develops every employee in an organization, and positively impacts their health and well-being.
Using Transformational Leadership For Worker Health
Now that you understand how transformational leadership can influence employees’ health, below are tips for using it to empower the health and wellness of your employees.
Focus on preventive measures
One of the most effective ways of using transformational leadership to promote workers’ health is by facilitating preventive services for your workers. This can help reduce sick leaves among your employees and keep their productivity high.
You can implement preventive measures for your employees by encouraging them to undergo routine medical checkups, administering at-work flu shots, having a doctor visit the workplace and advising employees on common health issues, and so on.
Listen to your workers
As a transformational leader, you should listen to their workers’ needs. They should put themselves in their position to better understand their situations. Be more open with the employees; listen to their problems, share their concerns, and even offer solutions where necessary.
While a boss looks at things from how they can benefit or harm the business, a leader should try to understand why a worker is making a request to enable them to reach a fair conclusion.
Encourage social connections among your employees
In today’s hectic world, it is easy for the employees to get stressed, nervous, anxious, and even feel lonely every day they show up to work. This can take a toll on their mental health and affect their productivity.
However, you can solve this by encouraging and taking the necessary actions to create social connections among all the team members.
Organizing welcome meals or get-togethers after work can help the workers socialize and create new bonds. Team building exercises around the office and work outings also encourage socializing among your workers.
Consider an onsite fitness
Workers who lead a sedentary life by sitting all day in the office must regularly engage in physical exercises. Otherwise, they may end up dealing with health issues associated with prolonged sitting hours.
While it is easy to educate your employees on the importance of exercising regularly, it’s not easy to get them to start doing it.
But one approach that can get them into action is setting up an onsite fitness at the workplace. You can equip it with several exercise bikes, free weights, etc.
Extending the lunch breaks by up to 20 minutes for employees who wish to work out works even better at getting them involved. And if budget allows, you can even hire an aerobics instructor for before-work classes.
Create a healthy atmosphere for the workers
You can also improve your workers’ wellness by enhancing their physical workspace. Here are various ways in which you can make the workspace atmosphere healthy for your employees:
- Install air filters. This helps ensure your employees have quality air and keeps respiratory health problems at bay.
- Invest in ergonomic seating for your workers to encourage healthy sitting posture and avoid back and neck pains.
- Install standing desks that enable the employees to easily switch between sitting and standing positions, thus reducing sitting time.
- Setup leisure and relaxation areas where employees can sit back and relax to decompress or take power naps.
- Encourage more walking within your office. This forces your employees off their seats, preventing long sitting hours and the health issues tied to it.
- Provide healthy snacks in the breakroom to encourage workers to lead a healthy life
Adapt health incentives at your organization
The wellness programs and health incentives can also help keep the employees healthy. These programs involve offering financial rewards to workers who meet set health goals.
For instance, the company can offer to cover part of the health care premiums for workers who maintain a healthy weight or lower their blood pressure.
For the best results, you should tailor these programs to meet the specific needs of your workers. For instance, you can create a program for specific groups of people like people living with diabetes, pregnant women, and so on.
Final word
Poor employee health can derail the proper implementation of transformational leadership and business goals in your organization. When your workers aren’t feeling well, they won’t be able to work at their best, and this ends up affecting your business.
Now that we have discussed how you can use transformational leadership to benefit the health of your employees, you can go ahead and implement this in your organization. Remember, when your employees are healthy, they feel happier and are highly productive.