The Effect of Empowering Leadership on Employee Mental Health

Little research has focused on empowering leadership and its effect on employee mental health in the beauty and wellness industry so far. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this study examines how empowering leadership influences employees’ mental health, with a focus on the mediating role of psychological empowerment. An online survey was conducted in South Korea, targeting full-time Korean employees in the beauty and wellness industry, and a total of 250 responses were used for data analysis. The results from structural equation modeling indicated that empowering leadership fosters employees’ psychological empowerment consisting of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact. Second, enhanced psychological empowerment leads to a reduction of poor mental health indicators, including emotional exhaustion, depression, and anxiety. Third, empowering leadership directly contributes to alleviating feelings of emotional exhaustion and depression, suggesting that empowering leadership itself plays a main role in affecting employees’ mental health. Finally, empowering leadership mitigates employees’ anxiety only through the mediating effect of psychological empowerment. Taken together, the study’s findings emphasize the importance of empowering leadership and psychological empowerment as valuable resources that effectively help employees in the beauty and wellness sector cope with job demands, thereby diminishing mental health problems and promoting a healthy workplace.