An investigation of the relationship between employees' emotional intelligence and performance

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between employees’ emotional intelligence and their performance. A total of 444 employees working in privately owned organizations were selected conveniently for this study. Emotional intelligence was measured through a scale consisting of 33 items and employee performance through a 16 items scale that measured their organizational citizenship behavior. These were self reported measures asking for responses on a five point Likert scale. Pearson correlation and linear regression analyses were applied to assess the association and prediction relation between independent and dependent variables. The results revealed a moderately high correlation between emotional intelligence and organizational citizenship behavior. It was also established that employees’ job performance can be predicted significantly based upon their emotional intelligence scores. The predictive power of emotional intelligence for performance suggests the use of emotional intelligence measure as a selection tool by human resource managers. Key words: Organizational behavior, human resource management, emotional intelligence, organizational citizenship behavior, employee selection.