The effect of leader behavior on employee sickness absence
This study shows that much of the variance in sickness absence between departments during organizational change can be predicted by the line manager’s behavior prior to change. Four leader behaviors were related to employee sickness absence. However, contrary to our expectations, social support was related to higher, not lower, levels of absence.
Task monitoring was related to lower sickness absence at time 1. This finding supports the assumption that task monitoring provides managers with information they can use to give feedback to employees and to motivate them to attend work. The line managers’ display of loyalty to their superiors was related to higher sickness absence at both times. This result supports the assumption that the less loyal manager may reduce the demands experienced by employees during change by adapting the change process to employee needs. This finding is in line with the fact that several line managers indeed opposed the change process, and might have actively shielded their employees from the changes. Problem confrontation was related to lower sickness absence only in departments were the leader also displayed high social support. This finding partially supports the assumption of Saksvik and colleagues [
39] that conflict resolution is an important part of healthy change. The line managers may reduce absence by confronting problems such as suspicious absence or conflicts that might strain employees. However, our results indicate that this strategy will be successful only if the leader is also seen as supportive. Negative leader behavior was not significantly related to sickness absence at any time.
Contrary to our assumptions, increased social support was related to increased sickness absence in departments that reported low and medium problem-confrontation behavior in their leader. Much empirical support exists for a relationship between low levels of social support and poor subjective health and high sickness absence e.g., [
13,
29‐
31]. However, a closer look at the literature suggests that the relationship is more complex. A Swedish study by Magnusson Hanson and colleagues [
56] indicated that supervisor support was primarily important for men’s health, while women responded more to colleague support. Väänänen, Pahkin, Kalimo, and Buunk [
32] found that supervisor support affected subjective health positively after a merger, but only among white-collar workers. Among blue-collar workers, strong social support from coworkers increased the effect of a decline in job position on subjective health. Terry and colleagues [
10] found a direct positive effect of supervisory support on wellbeing, but an indirect negative effect of colleague support on wellbeing. Bacharach, Bamberger, and Biron [
33] found when investigating the effects of alcohol consumption on absence that whereas high coworker support reduced the effects of high alcohol consumption on absence, high supervisor support seemed to increase the effect. They suggest that a supervisor who is perceived as supportive might also be perceived as more understanding and tolerant of absenteeism.
Setting our findings in the context of previous research, we argue that leader behavior is not experienced in a vacuum, but rather in the context of the relationship in which it occurs. Based on our findings and previous research, this interaction might be particularly true for social support. Considering the conclusions of Bacharach and colleagues [
33] that social support might sometimes lead to increased sickness absence by causing employees to believe that absence is understood and accepted, we propose that this perceived tolerance can be maintained only when the supervisor does not address problems with absenteeism. In our study, social support was not related to increased absence in departments with leaders who practiced high problem confrontation. It is also possible that a line manager’s display of support and perceived tolerance of absence might be of extra importance in situations where added stress makes sickness absence a more accepted coping mechanism.
To sum up, this study’s results clearly highlight the importance of the line manager’s behavior for sickness absence during organizational change. The results also identify some specific leader behaviors as particularly important, and the necessity of interpreting the different leader behaviors in interaction with each other. To what extent these behaviors’ importance is restricted to settings of organizational restructuring should be further investigated in future studies.
Sickness absence: A measure of ill health or motivation
In interpreting the findings, it is important to discuss what we measure when we study registered sickness absence. Registered sickness absence is all absence registered as absence due to ill health. As previously argued, sickness absence is not a simple function of health, but an act influenced both by the employees’ motivation to attend work and their ability to do so [
17]. Research has indicated that the proportion of registered sickness absences that is unrelated to ill health is likely to be small [
23]. However, while several diseases or injuries preclude the possibility of attending work, many also leave room for the individual to decide. Motivation therefore plays an important role in the individual’s decision whether to be absent or to attend work when ability to work has been reduced [
22]. The relationship between leader behavior and sickness absence might therefore be mediated by both motivation and ill health.
Empirical research indicates that medically certified long-term absence is an accurate measure of ill health while self-certified absence to a greater extent is also influenced by other factors, such as job satisfaction and subjective experiences [
57‐
59]. Our analysis shows that leader behavior explained variance of both medically certified absence and self-certified absence. These results therefore indicate that leader behavior might influence employee health as well as motivation. However, this finding should be further investigated in future research.
Limitations
We must be careful in interpreting causal interferences between the variables, as we lack a control group and have only a limited number of control variables. By controlling for division affiliation, we attempt to indirectly control for departmental differences that could influence our results (e.g., demography, work task, and effect of change), but having a greater number of detailed control variables would have been beneficial. However, the fact that leader behavior and sickness absence are measured at different times is important, because such an approach largely protects us against making wrong assumptions about the direction of the causal relationship.
Due to anonymity concerns, it was necessary to perform the analyses at an aggregated level. We would have preferred to use alternative methods, such as multilevel analyses, as we lose information and the analyses become less efficient when we aggregate. Because we are not interested in individual differences, parts of the information lost are of less importance for the present study. Still, it is especially important to remember that absence of evidence (e.g., for the effect of negative leader behavior) is not evidence of absence [
60].
When we aggregate the questionnaire responses, we also make assumptions about the respondents’ representativeness. Our dependent variable is the total absence level at each department, yet our independent variable (leader behavior) is based on the responses of 40% of the employees at the given departments. In the analyses, we therefore assume that the respondents adequately represent their entire departments. If the nonrespondents had answered significantly differently than the respondents did, there would have been a nonresponse bias [
50]. In the case of nonresponse bias, it can be misleading to generalize the results to the population. A high response rate is generally considered important because it is expected to reduce the probability of nonresponse bias [
61,
62]. The response rate of the present study was 40%, which is below the average of 48% in published articles [
49]. Attempts have been made to formulate general rules about acceptable levels of response rates (e.g., analyses done by Kramer, Schmalenberg, Brewer, Verran, and Keller-Unger showed that a response rate of 40% or more was adequate to obtain representative data [
63]). However, such rules may be misleading, because data with high response rates may suffer from more nonresponse bias than data with low response rates does [
50,
61]. Instead, it is important to also use techniques that more directly attempt to assess nonresponse bias [
50]. In the present study, we used archival analysis and wave analysis to look for possible signs of nonresponse bias. Though there is an underrepresentation of employees in the youngest age group (younger than 29 years old), the results generally support the representativeness of the respondents. It is nevertheless important to keep in mind that errors could arise because the samples used for the independent and dependent variables were different.
Aggregating leader behavior to department level also limits our ability to make conclusions at an individual level. Instead, conclusions are made at department level (e.g., the department where the leader displays high social support also suffers from higher absence. However, the individuals experiencing the highest social support might not be absent). This limitation may, however, also be viewed as a strength. For example, it is less likely that the results are caused by positive people who both are less absent and evaluate their leader more favorably.
Because the data had limited strength and lacked detail, we were unable to analyze more precisely leader behavior’s effect on different types of absence. We were unable to distinguish between short- and long-term absences because the data lacked strength. Dividing the dependent variable would have limited the variation in the variable, and it would have been harder to get significant findings with the present data’s limited sample size. Previous research has shown that many risk factors are the same for both long and short spells of absence, including several work characteristics [
64]. However, that both short- and long-term absence absences are included means that a small proportion of employees with long spells of absence unproportionately affect the data and results. We were also unable to distinguish from the rest those diagnoses more likely to have been influenced by a change process and by leader behavior. Most medically certified absence is absence due to muscle and skeletal disorders and mental illness, covering 42% and 18% of all absence, respectively, in 2008 [
65]. These diagnosis are both health problems typically associated with stress [
66‐
68], which therefore is likely to be influenced by change processes and by leader behavior (as argued above). Furthermore, it is possible that a stressful work environment influences other types of sickness absence (e.g., pregnancy-related absence [
69]), though the effect will likely be much smaller. Nevertheless, further analyses differentiating between diagnosis and / or length of absence might give important information about the nature of the relationship between leader behavior and sickness absence.
Finally, the study did not use a previously validated questionnaire to measure leader behavior; instead, we used data collected as part of a leader evaluation. Therefore, we paid extra attention to the survey’s psychometric properties, and tested the factor structure’s validity as part of the present study. The results have supported the assumption that the questionnaire is reliable and valid. In addition, because the questionnaire was developed especially for leader evaluation in a health care environment, it encompasses issues especially important for leaders in the healthcare sector and other important variables less frequently studied, such as loyalty to superiors and negative leader behavior. Therefore, the questionnaire provided a great opportunity to study potentially important aspects of the line manager’s behavior that have received limited attention in the literature so far.
Despite the present study’s limitations we believe that this paper is a valuable contribution to the research field. It can be difficult to obtain access to data in an organization experiencing major restructuring, and consequently, the topics discussed in this paper have received limited attention in the literature so far. It is therefore important to make the best use of the opportunity when data are available. By combining data from different sources, collected at multiple times, the present study gives important information about the importance of the line manger during organizational change.
Generalizability and the uniqueness of the health sector
Norway’s health sector has many characteristics that differ from those of other sectors and of for-profit companies in ways that might influence the findings and their generalizability. These differences, however, also make it particularly important to study such public organizations.
First, Norway’s health sector is continually expanding, and at most large hospitals (including the one studied) the threat of downsizing is slim to nil. This security might reduce the strain on employees, but it might also remove some of the disciplinary function that the fear of losing one’s job represents. The importance of monitoring and the leaders’ willingness to address problems concerning suspicious absence might therefore both be heightened.
Second, hospitals have been described as organizations decoupled between top management and the medical staff [
70]. The line managers are still an active part of the medical staff, and might therefore be expected to stay loyal to their fellow clinicians. The negative consequences of a line managers’ undivided loyalty to superiors might therefore be stronger in the health sector.
Third, registered sickness absence in health and social services is the highest in Norway, more than 2 percentage points above the average in all sectors [
71]. Because the absence levels are consistently higher than are those in other sectors, other factors might influence absence levels in this sector. The high levels of absence might create more opportunities for the leader to have a visible influence than in sectors with minimal absence.
Finally, employee characteristics, particularly gender distribution, are an important aspect of the health sector. The vast majority of hospital employees are female. In the present study, 86% of participants were female. In Norway, females have both higher self-certified absence and higher medically certified absence, even after subtracting pregnancy-related absence [
65,
71]. A literature review of the relationship between sickness absence and gender showed that the psychosocial work environment might influence women’s sickness absence somewhat differently than men’s [
72]. The review indicated, though not conclusively, that women might react differently to stressors, use different resources, and to a greater extent use absence as a coping mechanism. Active jobs, with high psychological demands and high control, have been associated with increased absence among women [
30,
59,
73]. However, among men active jobs were not related to absence or were associated with decreased absence [
30,
59,
73]. Similarly, an autocratic leader style was related to higher sickness absence in men, but not in women. And while women seemed to be adversely affected if their leaders practiced too much or too little team integration, men were not [
12]. Perhaps, therefore, the results of the present study are not generalizable to a male-dominated population.