Leadership Communication and Healthcare Employee Performance During Crises: A PLS-SEM Study of Level-Four Hospitals in Kenya
Abstract
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has focused interest on the critical role that leadership can play during times of crisis. Although the subject of healthcare employees’ performance in crisis has received much scholarly probing, the potential contribution of leadership communication towards circumventing the daunting challenges experienced during such times has not been sufficiently documented. Therefore, this study evaluated the role of leadership communication on employee performance during times of crises, deploying a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) framework. It was anchored on the transformational leadership theory proposed by Bass. The study targeted 1193 healthcare employees working in level-four hospitals in Kenya. From this population, a sample of 248 healthcare employees was calculated using the Taro Yamane formula. Stratified sampling was then used to select specific employees representing various sections of each hospital, including heads of section, nursing, dental, laboratory, public health, health records, clinical officers, medical officers, and physiotherapy. The findings showed that level-four hospitals emphasised leadership communication, effects of engagement clarity, and authenticity during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing employees to offer satisfactory healthcare performance. The PLS-SEM results affirmed that authenticity (b=0.261, p<0.05) and clarity (b=0.312, p<0.05), as leadership communication facets, were significant predictors of healthcare employee work performance during crises. The study concludes that leadership communication can be leveraged to improve healthcare employee work performance during crises. Therefore, healthcare stakeholders should enhance leadership communication mechanisms in level-four hospitals to strengthen healthcare employee performance during crises.
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