What is Health-Oriented Leadership?

Leadership is the most crucial factor in driving improvements in employee wellbeing.

Leaders formulate the business strategy and ultimately decide where it sits on the agenda. However, 70% of CIPD respondents said that while leaders had employee wellbeing on their agenda, only 42% think they encourage a focus on this through their actions and behaviour. In my own research, participants noted that while wellbeing may be talked about on formal channels, it was viewed as ‘lip service’ or a ‘tick box’ exercise as leaders did not model healthy behaviours around wellbeing or stress through their own day-to-day actions. It was also clear that organisational culture had a greater impact than any formal wellbeing policies or programmes. Therefore, it is important for leaders to address this and better understand how they can lead by example. To achieve this, we must view wellbeing as a skill or competency that leaders can develop, much like communication or emotional intelligence.

Health-Oriented Leadership

One effective approach to achieving this is through Health-Oriented Leadership, which focuses on prioritising wellbeing as a core leadership competency. Research has shown that adopting this approach can have a positive impact on employee health, wellbeing, job satisfaction, performance and engagement. This approach highlights the leader's active role in promoting employee health and wellbeing by looking after both themselves (Self Care) and their employees (Staff Care). These two components—self-care and staff care—are built on three key dimensions: value, awareness, and behaviour. To lead in a health-oriented manner, leaders must be classify health as important (value), be aware of their own health status (awareness), and actively care for their own health (behaviour). Strong self-care practices in leaders and actions to take care of their staff, enable them to serve as role models, encouraging employees to practice their own self-care.

Want to know how to put Health-Oriented Leadership into practice?

Well Work 360 offers Health-Oriented Leadership training designed to equip you with the knowledge and practical tools needed to integrate wellbeing into your leadership approach. This programme helps you turn theoretical concepts into actionable strategies that can be implemented within your team and organisation, fostering a culture of health, resilience, and high performance. Click here for course information.