Managing Employee Well-Being Remotely : An Explorative Study of Employee Well-Being When Working Remotely from a Leader Perspective

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a major shift towards remote work and its practices are predicted as here to stay. It entails many challenges since both the physical and psychosocial working conditions vastly differ from an office-setting, posing a threat for employee well-being. Leaders have the ability to control employee well-being through activities and their leadership style, emphasizing the importance of exploring the topic from a leader’s perspective. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore employee well-being in a remote work setting from a leader perspective, including the leadership activities used to manage it and how leaders adapt their leadership to the remote setting. Method: The primary data is collected from ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with leaders in both public and private organizations. The data have been analyzed and interpreted using an explorative approach and inductive thematic analysis. Conclusions: This study adds multiple aspects within the common theoretical themes of the social context, communication, work-life balance and stress identified as affecting employee well-being remotely. Moreover, it expands the knowledge of leader activities used to enhance employee well-being remotely such as providing opportunities for social interactions. Lastly, the study suggests leaders to balance remote work’s demand for employee independence by providing job resources such as support and adapt their leadership not only to the employee readiness, but also the expectations set on them, their own readiness and the remote situation