This paper includes a literature review and analysis of ‘good example’ case studies against a set of 12 criteria. The case studies that were included originated from a range of countries (i.e. Austria, Romania, Germany, France, UK, Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland). The paper considers how occupational safety and health (OSH) responsibilities are promoted through business leaders, including practical steps and recommendations to manage this and encourage effective leadership. The findings from the literature review suggests that effective leaders can have a positive influence on OSH behaviours of employees. The authors also note five key principles for good leadership in OSH and recommendations for leaders.   

In this study, survey data was collected from three local authorities and a police force between Nov 2006 and January 2007. The data collected included absence measures, leadership measures (in relation to the respondent’s line manager) and other health/work measures. The aim of the study was:  1) To identify to what extent transformational leadership is associated with employees’ absenteeism and 2) To explore how transformational leadership works alongside other factors known for their positive or negative influence on absence (e.g. work climate, work-family conflict, and health). The findings showed that transformational- reward leadership was a significant predictor of lower absence, whereas performance-oriented leadership showed an opposite relationship, associated with higher absence. However, at follow up neither types of leadership were a significant predictor of absence, suggesting that there were other more significant variables than leadership which were stronger predictors of absence.

This evidence review is aimed towards employers, senior leaders, managers and human resource professionals who are involved with workplace health. The aim of the review is to; explore how the organisation’s culture can have an effect on people’s health and wellbeing; promote leadership which is supportive of employees’ health and wellbeing and help managers to manage in this way; and provide a business case for how a line manager can support employee health and wellbeing. The recommendations within this guidance were based on the best available evidence and were reported in eleven broad themes: organisational commitment, physical work environment, mental wellbeing at work, fairness and justice, participation and trust, senior leadership, role of line manager, leadership style of line manager, training of line manager, job design and monitoring and evaluation. This updated version also includes additional recommendations for over 50's.

This study takes a qualitative approach to identify practices in good health and safety leadership and workforce engagement. Data was collected in semi-structured interviews and focus groups with managers, employees and health & safety representatives from six different ports. The findings identified a number of management practices which leaders can use to ensure good health and safety engagement, these include; being visible, leading by example, being approachable and having an ‘open door’ policy, listening to workers’ concerns, demonstrating the value of reporting, and providing feedback on health and safety issues. The findings highlight useful insight for leaders to engage their workforce in practice which is safe and healthy. It is important to note that these findings were collected from a specific small working sample from a particular industry (i.e. ports).

This report used a qualitative and quantitative approach to; 1) examine the usability of the management competency framework (developed in Phase one), 2) to refine the competency framework further by three difference sources, 3) to design a stress management competency indicator tool which measures an individual has the management competencies for preventing and reducing stress at work. The sample included 152 managers and 656 direct reports. The main findings from this research are discussed and recommendations made. They authors highlight that there is not a singular key behaviour for managers which leads to effective stress management, instead managers should consider a set of behaviours which are likely to differ depending on the context of the stress management situation.  The authors call for further research to test the manager competency intervention and other interventions which aim to develop managers competencies in reducing stress within the workplace.

The CIPD was commissioned by the Bank Workers Charity and Mind to conduct an independent evaluation of the impact of line manager mental wellbeing training in four UK-based retail banks. Overall, evaluation found that training led to positive change in a number of ways, including: managers having a positive experience through a combination of face-to-face and e-modules, managers developed skills to identify poor mental health, organisational attitudes to mental health are improving and employees become more comfortable to speak about their mental health and an improvement of managers’ abilities to address poor mental health with a positive, proactive approach.