Abstract
Depression and along-going sick leave negatively influence employees and organizations. Organizations, however, may also contribute to employees’ depression and sick leave by imposing a high workload. We therefore examined whether resource-providing supervisors may buffer the impact of employees’ workload on depression and subsequent sick leave. We analyzed longitudinal data from Germany of 276 employees in female-dominated industries and their 90 supervisors. The results of the multilevel analyses revealed that employees’ workload indirectly affected sick leave via an increase in depression, replicating existing evidence. If supervisors provided sufficient resources, this indirect effect vanished. Thus, organizations may counteract their contribution to employees’ depression and sick leave by assuring that supervisors provide sufficient resources.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, BPF, upon reasonable request.
Notes
1 Given that perceived or actual workload may be increased in the presence of depression, we excluded mild cases of depression at time 1 from the analyses (n = 17), in line with the suggestion of Zadow et al. (Citation2021). While for the simple mediation hypothesis (Hypothesis 1: γ = 0.276, p = 0.104) did not reach significance for the reduced sample, the results still support a moderation of the first pathway by resource-oriented leadership (Hypothesis 2: γ = –0.316, p = 0.039). Specifically, we found an indirect effect of employee workload on their sick leave via depression (Hypothesis 3) when the amount of resources provided by the supervisor is low (γ = 0.481, p = 0.026), but not when it is moderate (γ = 0.255, p = 0.116) or high (γ = 0.028, p = 0.889).