Personal growth or servant leader: What do hotel employees need most to be affectively well amidst the turbulent COVID-19 times?

With a focus on serving employees' highest priority needs, servant leaders can promote affective well-being. An important mechanism by which this relationship may manifest is through elevating employees' personal growth, which elicits positive effects that are connected with feelings of affective well-being. However, in turbulent times, furloughed employees may appreciate having a leader who cares for them and is attentive to their needs rather than experiencing personal growth. Using structural equation modeling to analyze a sample of 205 Spanish hotel employees after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that servant leadership increased the affective well-being of employees both directly and by elevating their personal growth. A multigroup analysis, together with the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, also revealed that, for active employees, both having a servant leader and experiencing personal growth were important for feeling affective well-being. However, for furloughed employees, only being supported by a caring leader was important. Thus, we shed new light on the mechanisms underlying the positive effect of servant leadership on employees' affective well-being and how this link works in times of severe change, such as those caused by the pandemic.

Can servant leadership prevent hotel employee depression during the COVID-19 pandemic? A mediating and multigroup analysis.

The hospitality industry has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with changes that have harmed employees' psychological well-being. However, having supervisors who are servant may make a difference. With a focus on serving others and the care taken to ensure their employees' highest priority needs are served, these leaders could help employees feel less depressed in these complicated times. By instilling servant behaviors in followers that help them become people that others can trust or with whom they can develop friendships, leaders could help these employees earn greater levels of personal social capital (PSC) through which to more successfully address pandemic times, especially if furloughed. Using structural equation modeling to analyze a sample of 205 hotel employees in Spain, we found that servant leadership directly decreases depression, and that PSC mediates this relationship. Our multigroup analyses (MGA) findings also reveal that when these employees are furloughed, the negative effect of PSC and the mediating role of PSC in this relationship is stronger. New light is thus shed on how servant leadership is effective in reducing employee depressive symptoms in times of severe changes such as those produced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Occupational Health and Safety, Organisational Commitment, and Turnover Intention in the Spanish IT Consultancy Sector.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact that occupational health and safety policies have on employees' work and organisational commitment and, in turn, on their intention to leave the company. METHODS: For this study, we designed a questionnaire with a five-level Likert scale and distributed it among professionals from different companies in the IT consultancy sector in Spain. The data collected from 458 completed questionnaires were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique using the SmartPLS software. RESULTS: From the analysis of the data, it was concluded that there is indeed a positive relationship between occupational health and safety policies and employees' work and organisational commitment, as well as a negative relationship between these policies and the intention to leave the company. Similarly, there is a negative relationship between employees' work and organisational commitment and their turnover intention. CONCLUSIONS: Although, due to the activity of professionals in the sector, occupational health and safety has not been an area of priority, it was concluded from this study that an improvement in these areas would have a beneficial effect on the commitment of workers to the company, thus helping to reduce the high levels of turnover in the sector. Future lines of research, as well as their practical application and the limitations of the study, are indicated at the end of the paper.