Employee Attitude as a Mediator between Transformational Leadership Style and Employees’ Readiness to Change During COVID-19

In the beginning of this decade, the worldwide impact of COVID-19 forced widespread changes, emphasizing the crucial role of leadership in shaping employee mindset and readiness to address challenges affecting their daily responsibilities and performance. This research examines the role of transformational leaders, in determining employees' readiness for change during the challenging circumstances of COVID-19, with employee attitude as a mediating factor. The study included 345 completed questionnaires from Saudi Arabian private companies. Exploratory factor analysis revealed the factor structure and regression analysis was conducted to investigate the direct impact of transformational leadership on employee readiness to change. The study also examined the mediating effect of employee attitude between transformational leadership and readiness to change. The findings of the research indicating a positive correlation between transformational leadership, employee attitude and readiness to change. Further, employee attitude significantly mediated the relationship between transformation leadership and readiness to change, indicating the support of all hypotheses of the study. Understanding how managers can foster a sense of the need for change is crucial. Therefore, future studies should expand to other nations and consider diverse leadership philosophies. This study supports managers in formulating policies to address employee related issues and facilitating acceptance of change during instances such as the COVID-19 outbreak. Saudi organizations and the government can utilize this knowledge to enhance future workplace resilience and crisis response strategies.