The protecting effect of resource-providing supervisors on the relationship between workload, depression and sick leave: A multi-level moderated mediation analysis

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.

Keywords:

• Depression
• sick leave
• workload
• supervisor
• resources
• multi-level analysis
• job demands-resources model

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. (2021). 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).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Grant F 2199 in the context of NEW OSH ERA (New and Emerging Risks in Occupational Safety and Health) within the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme (ERA-NET scheme).