Health-Promoting Leadership in Virtual Work Settings – Challenges and Opportunities in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Current challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic have a massive impact on the way we work in terms of the necessity to virtually organize collaboration across distance, time and organizational boundaries. It is important to notice that these changes come along with various implications for employees and are likely to affect their mental health. In view of this, especially leadership may be a critical linchpin in trying to ensure and further promote health and productivity. The aim of this chapter is to link established leadership concepts to relevant characteristics of virtual work in order to critically examine the fit of these concepts and analyse challenges and opportunities. Building on that, we want to illustrate central health implications of increasing virtual work settings for the people involved and to discuss possibilities of health-promoting leadership in these contexts. Thereby, potential influencing factors like work content, work environment and technology, work organization and social relations are brought into play and reflected in order to identify opportunities and challenges for virtual leaders.