Health-oriented leadership

The American sociologist Aaron Antonovsky (1923-1994) was one of the first scientists to ask: Why do some people remain healthy in the same stressful situation while others fall ill? He found the answer in the different personality structures of people and developed the so-called "Saluto-

Stress does not always make you ill

genetic model". This put health care on a new footing. For instead of the question "What makes people ill?" the question "What promotes their health?" and further "What can people do to maintain their health?" were now at the centre. " were at the centre.

Antonovsky assumed: A stressor such as a high workload does not fundamentally make people ill. Rather, it is the individual's way of dealing with the situation in question that is decisive. He also assumed that: There are factors that help to reduce the risk of illness. And these are pronounced to different degrees in different people and in their environment. He refers to these protective factors as resistance resources.

Key question: Why do people stay healthy?

Antonovsky distinguished between inner and outer resources of resistance. Among the inner resources he counted the physical constitution and the "ego strength", i.e. the self-confidence and self-awareness of people, as well as their ability for self-observation and relaxation. He also counted knowledge about health as well as knowledge of strategies for mastering challenging and stressful situations as inner resources of resistance.

build up resistance resources

Antonovsky counted the social support that a person receives from his or her environment as one of the external resistance resources, as well as a stable living environment that conveys trust and security. Financial resources also have a positive or negative effect on resilience. And one should not underestimate the importance of the basic attitudes that shape the thinking, feeling and behaviour of a person and their environment.

Strengthening the resistance

The concept of salutogenesis has proven itself in counselling practice and health prevention. That is why it is the basis of almost all modern concepts for workplace health promotion today - even if it is often only implemented in a fragmented way in company practice. And it is becoming more and more important as the workload of employees in companies increases. Because the more the workload of employees in companies increases, the more the realization that healthy and thus motivated and productive employees are a central success factor for every company is gaining ground in the top management of companies.

The term "resilience" is playing an increasingly important role in workplace health promotion.

Working environment - good for health

role. It originates from materials science and describes the ability of a material to return to its former shape after deformation due to the effects of pressure or tension. In the field of health promotion, resilience is understood as the ability to react flexibly to stress. This ability is gaining in importance in a working and living environment in which people increasingly have to react appropriately to new challenges, although they do not yet have any solution and action strategies for this.

The pressure to act is increasing

This ability can not only be developed, it should also be developed. More and more companies are realizing this the more frequently their employees reach their stress limits and are absent, for example, due to burnout or another mental or chronic illness. Their top management is becoming increasingly aware of how strongly "soft facts" such as the mental and physical health of employees impact positively or negatively on the "hard facts", for example operational results. So companies are investing more time and money in developing and implementing practical training and consulting concepts aimed at this,

•  reduce the factors that cause illness in the employees' working environment,
• to increase the resilience of the employees and
• to provide them with the competence to deal with challenging or stressful situations in a "health-friendly" way.

Managers play a key role

In these modern health promotion concepts, managers play a key role, as they are important multipliers and act as role models for their employees. In addition: Due to their functions in the organization, they largely shape the working conditions of the employees. Therefore, they should be made aware that, for example, a burnout (of their own person or of employees) is an indication that - for example, due to changed framework conditions - the necessary balance

Leadership plays the key role

between tension and relaxation as well as work and leisure time is missing. In this respect, an increasing number of burnouts is also a reason to rethink the previous type of leadership, cooperation and work organization.

This is also necessary because the upcoming employees from the so-called Generation Y (people born after 1980) have partly different demands on their workplace than older employees. They expect their job to enable them to maintain a balance between work and leisure. They also want to experience their work as satisfying and meaningful. Companies have to meet these demands, also due to demographic change, if they do not want to be among the losers in the "war for talents".

Healthy companies have healthy employees

Many companies find this difficult, not least because - according to the salutogenetic model - a large number of personal and organisational factors interact in promoting people's health and well-being. Accordingly, many dimensions must be taken into account when developing a sustainable concept for workplace health promotion or workplace health management. In summary, seven levels or dimensions can be distinguished (see Figure 1):

1. resilient enterprise as a framework

The company has to create the institutional framework which, in addition to preserving health, enables its active promotion. This includes among others

• the creation of (flexible) working time models that are also oriented towards the private needs of employees,
• a health-promoting and meaningful organisation of work, and 
• the provision of the necessary resources in terms of money, time and personnel.

2 Healthy leadership as a (corporate) goal

It is important to have a corporate and leadership culture that also focuses on the topic of health. In order to develop such a culture, it is necessary to recruit and promote managers who have a feeling for the effects of their behavior on the well-being and thus the health of their employees.

3. healthy leadership

In order for "health-oriented leadership" to take place in everyday work, it is also necessary to train managers. Among other things, they must learn to build up a relationship of trust with their employees - so that factors that are a burden on the health and well-being of the employees can also be discussed with them. They should also know what influence their supervisor's behaviour has on the workload of the employees.

4. healthy working in a team

The topic "How can we maintain a healthy working atmosphere despite high demands?" should also be regularly on the agenda of team meetings, for example - among other things, so that employees experience that they are also perceived as people by their managers. In addition, the team should think about strategies for maintaining a certain work-life balance in times of high workload, or when and in what form a balance can be achieved.

5. individual competence for life balance

Burnout almost always has private causes as well. However, it is first manifested in the professional environment, which is why this often appears to be the sole cause. Therefore, employees should also be given the competence to recognise when they reach their limits of stress in order to either reduce the stress and/or signal the need for support.

6. offers for health promotion

Employees should also be provided with offers to promote and maintain their health and to restore it in the event of a crisis. These promotion and support measures can be very diverse - depending on whether the lever is applied to the individual or the organisation, or whether the target group is already ill or (still) healthy employees. Based on the four dimensions of individual and organization as well as pathogenesis and salutogenesis, companies can also conduct a location analysis and determine where they still have a need for action or change.

7. health as a project

The project "Developing and implementing a sustainable health promotion concept in the company" needs the company management as a client. As a rule, measures to promote salutogenesis only take effect and have an impact in an organisation if the company management is committed to their necessity and therefore actively promotes and sustainably supports their introduction.

Health-oriented leadership

A key role in the introduction of a future-oriented and -capable health promotion concept in companies is played by the managers. They should rethink their self-image and redefine their role due to the increasing pressure for change that companies are under and the many new challenges that this poses for employees. They must learn to place the employee, with his or her wishes and needs, more strongly at the center of their thinking and actions, because only healthy and satisfied employees can deliver the desired or required performance. This also requires managers who, due to their personality, radiate the necessary calm and composure in a work environment increasingly characterized by a lack of planning ability, in order to offer their employees the desired support. This also requires healthy self-leadership on the part of the manager. If the managers of a company have this competence, then a first important step has usually been taken in the direction of "creating a health-promoting working environment".