Are Leaders Responsible for Employee Wellbeing?
The following contribution comes from the Yale University portal “Yale Insights”
Author: David C. Tate
Professor of Management; Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine
Work is increasingly understood as a powerful driver of wellbeing, and wellbeing as a factor that determines the performance and retention of organizations. We asked David Tate, a leadership expert at Yale SOM, how leaders can create environments that foster wellbeing without sacrificing rigor, accountability, or results.
Has there been a shift in the understanding of the relationship between work and wellbeing? Are leaders now expected to do more?
Yes, there has been a notable shift in how academics and practitioners view the connection between work and wellbeing. Historically, work was considered primarily a source of economic security and identity, and wellbeing was seen as a secondary outcome or the personal responsibility of the worker. However, contemporary research emphasizes that work is a significant determinant of psychological, emotional, and physical health, and that the organizational environment profoundly influences employee well-being.
Poor working conditions increase the risk of burnout.
Meta-analyses show that poor working conditions (high workload, low control, and limited social support) are associated with a higher risk of burnout syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and mental health disorders (Kivimäki et al., 2015).
Conversely, positive work experiences, meaningful work, and supportive leadership are linked to greater engagement, satisfaction, and psychological well-being (Harter et al., 2003; Bakker and Demerouti, 2017).
The line between support and intrusion is crossed when leaders ask about personal details unrelated to work, make assumptions about motives, or exert pressure under the guise of well-being.
These perspectives have transformed expectations of leaders. Modern leadership is increasingly understood not only as generating results, but also as fostering environments that promote employee well-being. Leaders are expected to demonstrate emotional intelligence and empathy, and to be aware of how organizational practices affect psychological health (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2013).
Organizations are increasingly integrating employee well-being and psychological safety into their strategic priorities, and leaders and executives are explicitly responsible for creating conditions that foster learning, engagement, and sustained high performance (Edmondson, 2019; Gallup, 2023).
Well-being as a leadership concern
The emergence of well-being directors and well-being dashboards illustrates that well-being is no longer just an individual responsibility, but a concern of leadership and the organization (Grabarek & Sawyer, 2025).
How can leaders attend to employee well-being while also being rigorous and high-performing?
Leaders can promote well-being while maintaining high performance by integrating it into the very definition of organizational success. Empirical research shows that workplaces that prioritize employee well-being tend to achieve superior results, such as increased engagement, lower turnover, greater innovation, and improved financial performance (Harter et al., 2003; Bakker and Demerouti, 2017; De Neve and Ward, 2025).
Effective strategies include:
Flexible job design. Offering autonomy and flexibility in task execution allows employees to manage stress without compromising performance standards.
Psychological safety. Encouraging employees to express their concerns and ideas without fear of reprisal improves both learning and mental health.
Aligning goals with well-being. Incorporating well-being metrics, such as workload balance or recovery practices, into organizational goals reinforces the idea that health and performance are complementary.
Role modeling. Leaders demonstrate their commitment to well-being by practicing self-care, modeling work-life balance, and showing vulnerability, indicating that employee well-being is valued alongside good results.
High Standards of Rigor
It is important for leaders to maintain high standards of rigor, making it clear that this should not come at the expense of personal health or ethical behavior. Evidence suggests that teams led by emotionally intelligent leaders who balance accountability with care are more resilient and productive over time (Cherniss, 2010; O’Boyle et al., 2011).
What role should well-being play in performance management and feedback conversations? How do you define the difference between being supportive and being intrusive as a leader?
Well-being should be an integral component of performance management, framed in a way that supports employees rather than micromanaging them. Research indicates that employees perform better when leaders pay attention to both the technical and human aspects of work (Grawitch et al., 2006; Grant, Christianson, and Price, 2007).
Best practices include:
Focusing conversations on support, not surveillance. Leaders can discuss workload, stress, or energy levels in the context of goals, without delving into personal lives.
Linking well-being to performance outcomes. Conversations about sleep, concentration, or stress management are appropriate when they relate to work results or productivity.
Offering resources and options. Leaders can guide employees toward coaching, employee assistance programs, or flexible schedules, rather than imposing specific behaviors.
Non-work-related personal details: The line between support and intrusiveness is crossed when leaders ask about non-work-related personal details, make assumptions about motives, or exert pressure under the guise of well-being. Respecting personal autonomy and confidentiality is essential. Leaders should maintain curiosity, empathy, and transparency, while respecting professional boundaries (Edmondson, 2019; Kulik et al., 2016).
Integrating well-being into performance management improves engagement, reduces burnout, and promotes sustainable performance. When properly framed, well-being is a powerful driver of high performance, rather than a distraction.
Why Don’t Leaders Care?
The following contribution comes from Medium, a platform for human stories and ideas. Here, anyone can share knowledge and wisdom with the world, without needing to build an email list or followers. The internet is noisy and chaotic; Medium is quiet, yet brimming with information. It’s simple, engaging, collaborative, and helps you find the right readers for what you have to say.
The author is Zach Mercurio, PhD, who describes himself as: I research and write about purpose, transcendence, and significance. Zach Mercurio, Ph.D., is a researcher, speaker, and author of “The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose.”
Indifferent leaders cause high staff turnover and mental health problems. But what makes it so hard for them to care? Here’s why:
Advice abounds for leaders on how to be caring, and rightly so.
Surveys show that around 50% of people don’t feel valued at work, almost 30% feel «invisible,» and only 24% believe their employer cares about their well-being.
For organizations, a lack of care has consequences. Feeling disrespected and undervalued can be almost ten times more predictive of employee turnover than salary or benefits. One study revealed that a lack of attention from leaders was one of the most common reasons people left a job without having another one lined up.
For individuals, feeling neglected by their leaders can be devastating.
A new study revealed that, for 70% of people, their direct manager had a more significant impact on their overall mental health than their doctor or therapist.
A 2021 study by the American Psychological Association revealed that 59% of employees experience adverse mental health consequences due to their work experiences. Between 2014 and 2018, rates of depression and anxiety among employees increased by 18%, and between 2022 and 2023, by 25%.
A key factor contributing to a higher risk of clinical anxiety and depression is a sense of insignificance: feeling unimportant to others.
There’s a reason the national suicide prevention hotline is called «You Matter Lifeline.»
When people feel they matter to others, studies show that objective indicators of chronic stress decrease. Research involving thousands of teens and adults repeatedly demonstrates that a greater sense of significance correlates with a lower risk of depression.
The solutions proposed to leaders to address the care crisis are desperately simple: acknowledge people, connect with them, show empathy, be compassionate.
My job is to research and help leaders achieve these things, but my second-grader made me question myself when he asked, «So your job is just to help people be nice to each other?»
Well, yes.
Developing modern leadership feels akin to restoring elementary school morality.
However, your question goes deeper and raises more important questions that we aren’t asking ourselves enough: Why don’t leaders care, or why can’t they care? What makes it so difficult for them to do something so simple? Where have we gone wrong? Why do I even have a job?
I refuse to believe that leaders wake up in the morning and say, «Today I’d like to be an indifferent leader.»
I’ve spent the last few months researching the root causes of indifferent leadership in work organizations. Five major barriers to caring kept emerging.
To foster more caring at work, we must create systems that facilitate it.
- Skill: Common sense isn’t common practice.
As my second-grader reminded me, caring is «common sense.» It’s «common sense» that we should be kind to people, respect them, be attentive to them, support them, or affirm them. But look at your to-do list today. Which of those actions is on your list?
There’s a gap between what we «know» is important and what we do strategically and intentionally. If you need evidence, scroll up and read the statistics in the first few paragraphs. The «common sense» approach to caring doesn’t work.
Good intentions require great skills.
You (or your organization) probably evaluate skills geared toward performance and output. Do you evaluate your capacity and skills for caring? What is your personal and professional development plan for paying attention to others or ensuring they feel heard? What is your technique for authentically checking in on people?
One of the most common mistakes leaders make is obsessing over lagging indicators like performance and productivity, and neglecting the most important indicator of all: people. That’s why we tend to have processes and practices for everything else in organizations, except for what truly matters to human beings.
When it comes to leadership and caring for others, we can no longer rely on people’s «intuition.»
The art of leadership lies in people. Great leaders hone their art.
Intuition doesn’t scale. Practices and skills do.
A recent survey revealed that 60% of employers say new hires (and future leaders) lack basic interpersonal skills.
Developing the technical skills to care for people at all levels must be a priority.
A key question: What skills, practices, and processes do you implement to ensure that the people around you feel cared for?
- Attention and Energy: The Scarcest Resources
Human attention and energy are the scarcest resources on the planet. Leaders care when they have the attention and energy available to do so.
A new McKinsey study revealed that middle managers only dedicate about 28% of their time to people management. Individual contribution tasks (31%), administrative tasks (18%), and strategy-related tasks (23%) consume the rest.
Become a member
The growing expectation of caring without increasing the resources to do so can lead to burnout and a loss of the energy leaders need to redesign workplaces.
This is probably why 35% of managers report feeling burned out often or always. Leaders are human beings with intense and complex lives, and they face the same stressors outside of work as everyone else.
Sometimes, greater responsibility also comes with greater invisibility.
Caring for people requires time and energy. We must ensure our systems create more time and regenerate the energy for caring.
A key question: Are we creating time and regenerating our energy (and that of our leaders) to care?
- Environment: What is possible and what is determined
The environment influences leader behavior in two ways: it can enable behavior (referred to as environmental possibilism) or determine that it will occur (referred to as environmental determinism).
If I have an hour free in my calendar each week, my environment allows me to stay in touch with my team members. But suppose my organization requires me to hold regular follow-up meetings with my team members and evaluates the quality of my relationships with them. In that case, the organizational environment determines whether the behavior occurs.
Many environmental conditions in organizations don’t even allow for attentiveness. If you work in a distribution center that tracks every minute of your day, dedicating the necessary time to attentiveness becomes nearly impossible. If you’re the clinical leader of a hospital with understaffing and an excess of patients, the likelihood of attentive behaviors is significantly reduced.
Many environmental conditions in organizations enable caring,
but leave its implementation to chance. For example, suppose leaders are expected to create psychologically safe climates, but they are not measured or evaluated based on how safe their employees feel to speak up. In that case, behaviors to ensure people feel heard are possible, but not guaranteed.
We cannot add more tasks to what leaders can «do» without ensuring that the environment enables and determines their completion.
Formal or informal rewards are one of the most powerful ways to influence human behavior through the environment.
We cannot trust leaders to be morally good in a system that incentivizes them not to be.
If we incentivize and promote selfish achievement and acquisition, we will have leaders who achieve and acquire for themselves. But if we recognize, incentivize, and promote caring behaviors, we will likely have more caring leaders.
A key question: What environmental factors might be preventing caring behaviors from occurring? Are there ways to reconfigure the environment to ensure that caring behaviors take place?
- Underestimating Impact: The Self-Esteem Problem
At an individual level, many leaders underestimate their impact on the lives of others, preventing them from initiating small acts of care that have a big impact.
In a recent study, psychologists Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley conducted several experiments
that allowed people to be kind to others through small acts. For example, in one experiment, the researchers asked people to write supportive notes to acquaintances. In each experiment, the findings were clear: the person performing the act of kindness underestimated its positive effect on the recipient each time.
One of the main reasons for this miscalculation is chronically low self-esteem. Studies show that nearly 85% of the world’s population has low self-esteem, which is a judgment of one’s own worth. Forty years of research show that leaders with low self-esteem are more likely to create toxic work environments due to a lack of awareness and belief in their impact.
Self-esteem is built through the experience of being important to others.
We cannot expect leaders to care if they don’t feel cared for.
When leaders are or have been treated as expendable or simply as a resource to help others produce more, they act as if they are a disposable resource and then treat others the same way. This well-studied phenomenon is called the Pygmalion effect: we become how we are treated.
One reason leaders may feel like a mere resource is the evolution of work as a
