Fostering mental health at work: the butterfly effect of management behaviors

Abstract

With the growing number of work-related mental health problems occurring worldwide, a call for all stakeholders to contribute to improving these problems has emerged. Managers’ behaviors may act as a resource to promote the involvement of employees to foster mental health at work through their behaviors. This study aims to identify the behaviors of managers supporting the behaviors of employees fostering mental health at work. Following a qualitative research design, data were collected through interviews (n = 22) and analyzed using a template analysis strategy. The results reveal 20 concrete, specific and fairly simple behaviors that managers may adopt to support the involvement of their employees in behaviors fostering mental health at work. For example, consulting employees, providing room for mistakes and organizing social activities are behaviors managers may adopt to support the engagement of employees in behaviors fostering mental health at work. According to social exchange theory, the results of this study propose levers to implement a favorable context in which the behaviors of managers and those of employees interact. Given the potential influence of managers’ behaviors on mental health at work, including this new knowledge in manager training would be judicious to foster shared responsibility for mental health at work.

Keywords:

• Organizational behavior
• management competencies
• social exchange theory
• mental health at work

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge all the individuals who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

There is no conflict of interest to declare.

Data available on request from the authors

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, AL, upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The critical incident technique is an interview method that collects information about human behavior on the basis of a lived situation (Dennis & Flanagan, 1954).

2 For the purpose of writing this article, only the final template is presented. The initial and intermediate versions of the template can be obtained by contacting the first author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the postdoctoral scholarship of the first author from the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et sécurité du travail.