First, even after controlling for individual-specific fixed effects and other job characteristics, such as those proposed in the workload model, we find that supervisors' good communication with staff and competence in managerial tasks significantly improve employees' mental health. The opinions expressed in the papers are solely those of the author(s), and do not represent those of the organization to which the author(s) belong(s) or the Research Institute for Economics, Trade and Industry. For example, we try to answer specific questions, such as whether workers' mental health depends on their boss's quality of management.
To answer these questions, we investigate the effect of leadership, communication, and supervisor skills on workers' mental health and productivity using two years of longitudinal data from Japanese full-time workers. 3 Although there are few relevant studies in the economics literature, several researchers in other fields have analyzed the effects of work-related factors on employees' mental health. 4 Some articles in the occupational health literature focus on the influence of the boss on the well-being of his workers.
Using data from Finnish employees, Sinokki et al. 2009) report that low workplace social support is associated with a 12-month prevalence of depressive or anxiety disorders. 2012) examines the effects of workplace bullying on employees' mental health. First, even after controlling for individual-specific fixed effects and other job characteristics, such as those proposed in the job strain model in the work environment psychology literature, we find that supervisors' good communication with subordinates and competence for management tasks significantly improve employees' mental health.
Productivity
To construct an index for mental health status, we use the following Likert scale: 0, 1, 2, and 3 for "much more than usual," "more than usual," "not more than usual," and " not at all", respectively. Therefore, although it is a somewhat indirect measure, we also use the probability of employee retention as another proxy for productivity. The former records whether the respondent is willing to leave his/her current job, and the second collects information on whether the respondent is actually conducting a job search at the time of the survey.
The first measure is therefore a modest version of intention to quit, while the second measure shows a much stronger measure, willingness to quit. For the first measure of retention, we use a questionnaire asking respondents: "In the past three years, have you ever thought about leaving your current job and moving to another company?" Let's create a dummy variable that takes 1 for those who answered. Regarding the second retention measure, we use a questionnaire in which we ask respondents: "Are you currently looking for a job?" Let's create a dummy variable that takes 1 for those who answered "Yes, I'm currently looking for a job," and 0 otherwise. 12.
Supervisorβs management and communication skills
Supervisorβs capability
Job characteristics
Number of work hours, consumption, and other control variables
Overtime = 1 if the actual number of hours worked per week exceeds the desired working hours per week, and otherwise = 0, and. Underemployment = 1 if desired working hours per week exceed actual hours worked per week and otherwise = 0. Other control variables include labor income, age, tenure, dummy variables for marriage and childbearing (where 1 is taken if respondents are married and have children, and 0 otherwise), and dummy variables for occupation.
Workplace atmosphere
We find that the management and communication skills of bosses, especially good communication with subordinates, is an essential factor in improving the well-being and productivity of workers (for more details, see the next section). Given this finding, we investigate whether good communication between supervisors and subordinates is somehow driven by each party's personality, their background, or a combination of both parties' characteristics. We also control for the number of years since the current supervisor became the employee's supervisor.
We use the "big five" personality traits, which comprise five factors: extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Specifically, we use the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) presented by Gosling et al. 2003), which is included in the fourth and fifth waves of the survey. The TIPI is a brief 10-question measure that measures 5 different aspects of personality traits (the Big 5 personality dimensions).
Each of the 10 items was rated on a 7-point scale, with responses ranging from βstrongly disagreeβ (1) to βstrongly agreeβ (7). The mean of the two bipolar items comprising each scale is then calculated and used in subsequent analyses. A unique feature of our survey is that we also asked each respondent to rate the personality traits of his or her immediate boss.
There may be a concern that personality traits rated by other people differ from actual personality traits. According to Borkenau et al. 2004), but the personality traits assessed by oneself and other people are highly correlated. In terms of these basic individual characteristics and personality traits, we also consider supervisor-subordinate compatibility.
For example, two people of the same gender, similar age, or the same personality may enjoy better communication than those belonging to different categories.
Empirical results
- Basic Results
- Impact of bosses and workplace atmosphere
- Boss Productivity Measures: Presenteeism and Worker Retention
- WorkerβBoss Attribute Combinations
As for the other control variables, longer working hours are detrimental to workers' mental health, all other factors being equal. In addition, both workload and passive work are detrimental to workers' mental health; in particular, the coefficient of the workload dummy is large, which is consistent with Karasek's (1979) workload model. In Table 3 , we examine which boss-related variables are associated with specific components of worker mental health by using each of the 12 GHQ12 subcategories as the dependent variable.
Given the results from Tables 2 and 3, we specifically focus on two specific variables related to bosses (βcommunicates wellβ and βcompetenceβ) and further investigate the impact of bosses on workers' mental health and productivity. This is to check whether interactions with colleagues affect the mental health of workers to a greater extent, since for many workers, the time spent with colleagues can be much longer than that with their bosses. The result in column (1) shows that the variable "knowledge sharing among colleagues" is statistically significant, suggesting that not only bosses but also colleagues influence the mental health of workers.
These results indicate that while good interaction with coworkers is an important factor, communication with the boss appears to be relatively more important in determining employee mental health. The results from the previous estimates include variations that may arise from employees' evaluations of the same bosses varying from year to year. We interpret that a change of the direct boss not only affects various factors such as the demand for work, the manageability of tasks and working hours, which can affect the mental health of employees, but is also a source of stress for employees in itself.
These results confirm that supervisors' good communication is extremely important in determining workers' well-being. Given that labor mobility is relatively low in Japan compared to other advanced economies, especially the USA (Ono [2010]), we examine whether any experiences related to job change in the past may influence workers' perception. We have shown that good communication between a supervisor and his/her subordinates is a key factor for workers' mental health as well as productivity.14 In the last part of this section, we assess whether any specific factors promote good communication.
Column (1) presents a simple case, including the only basic characteristics of the boss, age, gender, and number of years spent as a worker supervisor.
Conclusion
We found that even after controlling for individual-specific fixed effects and other job characteristics proposed in the job strain model, supervisors' good communication with staff and competence in managerial tasks significantly improve employees' mental health. Our findings add to this stream of literature in that specific combinations of personality traits may also be important for workplace outcomes. Third, we show evidence that a worker's mental health influenced by supervisors largely depends on whether the worker has had previous experience of changing jobs.
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