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The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa

Poor employee health and work disengagement have costly repercussions for organisations. To understand better how employers could support employee health, the study presented in this dissertation tested if employee's direct supervisors could do so when they show health promotional leadership behavio...

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Main Author: Glenny, Bernice
Other Authors: Meyer, Ines
Format: Thesis
Language:English
English
Published: Organisational Psychology 2025
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access_status_str Open Access
author Glenny, Bernice
author2 Meyer, Ines
author_browse Glenny, Bernice
Meyer, Ines
author_facet Meyer, Ines
Glenny, Bernice
author_sort Glenny, Bernice
collection Thesis
description Poor employee health and work disengagement have costly repercussions for organisations. To understand better how employers could support employee health, the study presented in this dissertation tested if employee's direct supervisors could do so when they show health promotional leadership behaviours. Additionally, it explored if such behaviours might also increase work engagement via physical and psychological wellbeing as mediator variables. The study employed a descriptive, quantitative survey design. Employees who reported to a leader in South Africa (N = 169) completed an online questionnaire which measured how they perceived their leader's role in health promotion and their own levels of work engagement and wellbeing. Linear regression analysis supported the hypotheses: Greater health promoting leadership was related to greater employee work engagement and this relationship was mediated by wellbeing. This suggests that leaders should take note of the importance of those leadership behaviours which promote employee's health and that it might be beneficial to train leaders to show these behaviours. The study findings suggest that health promoting leadership might not only benefit employees, but also the employing organisation due to its link with greater work engagement via greater mental and physical health. Further research should test this assumption as the study's descriptive design merely shows that the variables of interest are related, but not which one causes the other.
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language English
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provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2025
publishDateRange 2025
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publisher Organisational Psychology
publisherStr Organisational Psychology
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source_str UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/41583 The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa Glenny, Bernice Meyer, Ines Organisational psychology Poor employee health and work disengagement have costly repercussions for organisations. To understand better how employers could support employee health, the study presented in this dissertation tested if employee's direct supervisors could do so when they show health promotional leadership behaviours. Additionally, it explored if such behaviours might also increase work engagement via physical and psychological wellbeing as mediator variables. The study employed a descriptive, quantitative survey design. Employees who reported to a leader in South Africa (N = 169) completed an online questionnaire which measured how they perceived their leader's role in health promotion and their own levels of work engagement and wellbeing. Linear regression analysis supported the hypotheses: Greater health promoting leadership was related to greater employee work engagement and this relationship was mediated by wellbeing. This suggests that leaders should take note of the importance of those leadership behaviours which promote employee's health and that it might be beneficial to train leaders to show these behaviours. The study findings suggest that health promoting leadership might not only benefit employees, but also the employing organisation due to its link with greater work engagement via greater mental and physical health. Further research should test this assumption as the study's descriptive design merely shows that the variables of interest are related, but not which one causes the other. 2025-08-15T07:34:13Z 2025-08-15T07:34:13Z 2025 2025-08-06T13:01:56Z Thesis / Dissertation Masters Masters http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41583 en eng application/pdf Organisational Psychology Faculty of Commerce University of Cape Town
spellingShingle Organisational psychology
Glenny, Bernice
The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
thesis_degree_str Master's
title The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
title_full The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
title_fullStr The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
title_short The role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in South Africa
title_sort role of health promotional leadership for employee health and work engagement in south africa
topic Organisational psychology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/41583
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AT glennybernice roleofhealthpromotionalleadershipforemployeehealthandworkengagementinsouthafrica