Virtual Health-Promoting Leadership - a Qualitative Content Analysis on the Experiences of Leaders from One Year of Remote Work Under the Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: The COVID-19 crisis has forced many teams to work from home unprepared. This sudden shift proposes various adverse effects on employees' health since stress levels seem to increase in work and private settings. Previous research has identified healthy leadership as a valuable resource for improving the health of employees. This study examined how leaders promote health virtually in their team during a crisis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 virtual team leaders who managed their team virtually since the COVID-19 crisis. The information generated was then processed and interpreted using qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2015). Managing stress and workload, improving virtual communication, boundary management, monitoring and managing employees' health were the most mentioned behaviors of leaders they show for promoting health. Even though leaders described various health-promoting behaviors, some crucial factors such as building trust are perceived as not applicable virtually. Furthermore, this study could identify various critical organizational, social, and macro conditions that might influence virtual health promotion and should be accounted for when leading health-promoting. To account for the crisis, leaders stressed the importance of close connection to the team and promoting resilience to prepare for future uncertain events. This study explored health-promoting leadership under situational factors of the virtual context. Based on this study’s findings, leadership training can be tailored to the health-related needs of virtual work teams in crises. Future research should include the whole team to explore if and how employees experience leaders' health promotion.