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Primary Submission Category: Interventions/Programs
How Supportive of Leave are Supervisors? Employee Perceptions in a Public Academic Institution
Authors: Julia Goodman, Mari Peñarrubia Sanchez,
Presenting Author: Julia Goodman*
Access to paid leave is a structural determinant of health, linked to improved mental and physical health for workers and their families. Leave policies are often underutilized due to limited awareness and unsupportive organizational cultures, and supervisor support plays a critical role in shaping employees’ willingness and ability to take leave.
We conducted an online survey of employees at a large, public university in the Pacific Northwest to examine perceptions of supervisor support for family and sick leave. Working with the university’s human resources department, we emailed employees and invited them to participate. Baseline surveys were collected from February 9 to March 4, 2026. We assessed experiences with leave-qualifying situations and perceptions of family supportive supervisors’ behaviors around leave policies, including emotional support, role-modeling, instrumental and dual agenda support, psychological safety, and respect for time off during leave.
Of 453 participants, 320 (70.6%) reported at least one situation that could qualify them for leave (e.g., new child, medical condition for themself or a loved one, bereavement) during the prior 3 months, while 115 (25.4%) reported none (n = 18 missing). Among those experiencing a potential leave-qualifying situation, 179 (55.9%) took leave. Employees who faced such situations but did not take leave reported the lowest levels of supervisor support across multiple dimensions. Participants with no leave-qualifying situations reported the most positive perceptions of supervisor support. Employees with a leave-qualifying situation who did not take leave reported a negative impact score of 2.26 (SD = 1.01), indicating that, on average, they experienced between ‘a little’ and ‘a moderate amount’ of negative impact.
Overall, patterns of perceived supervisor support differed by employees’ recent leave-qualifying experiences. Enhancing supervisor training and organizational norms around leave may be an important step toward promoting equitable access to the health-protective benefits of paid leave.