With the literature excessively documenting the detrimental aspects of employment, such as stress and burnout, organizations have been increasingly encouraged to show concern for their employees’ health and well-being. As this work overload contradicts the so-called “healthy job”-defined as the demands on employees being appropriate in relation to their abilities and resources -it comes as no surprise that 43% of US employees think their employers should also be concerned with their health. Present-day work demands have found that 40% of people work more than 50 hours per week an additional 74% claims to be sleep-deprived. In most instances, employees’ stress stems from the high workloads they have to deal with on a regular basis. In consequence, the Stress Awareness Month 2020 was dedicated to identifying and alleviating Work-Related Stress and Anxiety. In most instances, work-related stress was found to also have effects on individuals’ health, leading to sleep deprivation or mental health issues amongst others and negatively affecting employees’ private lives. For some years already, work has been listed amongst the top three sources of stress. The 2020 Trends Report on Well-Being at Work concluded that work is taking its toll on people and their health, respectively. Increasing stress levels at the workplace constitute a concerning organizational trend. There is great potential to increase WPHP measures on the employer side, through both healthy leadership and supporting WPHP measures. (4) Conclusions: At present, companies are still more likely to delegate responsibility for employee health and well-being to their staff, having not fully realized the potential of healthy leadership and organizational health promotion. Likewise, the implementation of healthy leadership is rather limited to date. Yet, the results showed that only a few companies have already put some WPHP measures into practice. (3) Results: The study with employees from Austria and Germany ( n = 40) confirmed that employees have started to recognize the potential of the workplace as an environment, where individual health can be enhanced.
(2) Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews with 40 (full and part-time) employees from two European countries were conducted. In addition, the existence and support generated by the organization in form of Workplace Health Promotion (WPHP) is inquired. The present contribution seeks to investigate, to which extent individuals are able to deal with stress and whether their employers and respective supervisors (leaders) accept responsibility for their health, for instance, by leading by example. In consequence, employees have started to demand that organizations begin to accept responsibility for their health and well-being.
(1) Background: Increasing stress levels at the workplace constitute a concerning organizational trend, challenging not only employees but also organizations alike, as it is in most instances associated with increasing workloads.
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