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The purpose of this study was to describe health and social care leaders’ and employees’ perceptions of remote leadership and the associated factors.

A total of 45 leaders and 177 employees from one Finnish health and social care organization completed an electronic questionnaire between October and November 2020. The questionnaire included questions related to background information, along with structured and open-ended questions addressing remote leadership and the associated factors. The collected quantitative data was analyzed with statistical methods, while inductive content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data.

Remote leadership emerged as a developing form of leadership that was part of everyday life at a regional health and social care organization. However, it was also considered by some as a distanced and authoritarian form of leadership that reduced communication to a one-way flow of information. Remote leadership and digitalization in health and social care were generally perceived positively, especially among higher educated participants and those working mainly in a remote context. However, digitalization was also perceived as a burden and remote leadership as a source of uncertainty at work, especially among lower educated participants and those who worked mainly in traditional contexts.

This study expands the little-researched area and provides insights that can be used to further develop remote leadership and the related education.

This study aimed to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of remote leadership in health care sector.

Semistructured interviews were conducted among nurse leaders (N = 12) between January and March 2022. All of the interviewees had experiences of remote leadership and worked as immediate – (n = 5) or middle-level (n = 7) leaders in health care organizations across four provinces in Finland. The collected data were analyzed by inductive content analysis.

The leaders had experienced a rapid transition to remote leadership and highlighted the need for guidelines and joint discussions with different stakeholders. The interviewees felt that working life has changed in the last two years and that remote leadership will now be a key part of leadership in health care. The leaders’ experiences highlighted how important trust is in remote leadership. Furthermore, the interviewees pointed out a need for face-to-face contact and described other good practices for remote leadership. Overseeing work-related well-being was also stressed as important in the remote context; however, the interviewees expressed a need for instructions and tools concerning the management of employee well-being. The sudden change to remote leadership was not only described as interesting but also challenging, which has affected the leaders’ work-related well-being. Support – both from the organization and other employees – was found to be crucial to health care leaders’ work-related well-being.

The current study complements the little-researched topic of remote leadership in the health care sector. The results provide insights that can be used to develop remote leadership and/or guide future research.

This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ experiences of work-related well-being and its association with background variables, working conditions, work engagement, sense of coherence and burnout.

An electronic survey design was used. Data was collected between December 2015 and May 2016 with an instrument that included demographic questions and four internationally validated scales: the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, QPS Nordic 34+, the shortened Sense of Coherence scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Data was analysed using statistical methods.

A total of 155 nurse leaders completed the questionnaire, giving a 44% response rate. Most of them worked as nurse managers (89%). Participants’ work-related well-being scores ranged from 8 to 10. Statistically significant relationships were found between participants’ work-related well-being and their leadership skills, current position, sense of coherence and levels of burnout. In addition, there were statistically significant relationships between work-related well-being and all dimensions of working conditions.

This study underlines the fact that work-related well-being should not be evaluated based on a single factor. The participants’ perceived work-related well-being was high, although almost half of them reported always or often experiencing stress. The results suggest that nurse leaders may have resources such as good leadership and problem-solving skills, supportive working conditions and a high sense of coherence that prevent the experienced stress from adversely affecting their work-related well-being.