Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance of Employees working in the Financial Sector of Pakistan: Job Satisfaction as the Mediator

Abstract

The financial sector in Pakistan is rapidly experiencing changes and reforms that impact the employees’ job performance. Although the argument on how to predict the financial sector employees’ job performance remains complex and always a hard task to evaluate. Preliminary research identifies the existing literature gaps by scrutinizing the substantial role of emotional intelligence (EI) in employees’ job performance (JP). Furthermore, this research explored the association of emotional intelligence, (i.e., self-regulation, self-motivation, self-awareness, and social skills) with job performance along with the mediational role of employees' job satisfaction. For this varied purpose, the sample of N=224 financial sector employees were selected from different cities of Pakistan having an age range between 25 to 50 years. Reliable questionnaires were used for data collection i.e., Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (Schutte et al., 1998), Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (Koopmans et al., 2013), and The Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Spector, 1997,1985). Results revealed a positive association between EI with the JP of the employees. Furthermore, analysis of covariance depicted, emotional-intelligence is a covariate that established a significant outcome on employees’ job performance. Whereas the gender found to have no significant role. Moreover, employees’ job satisfaction significantly mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance. Comprehensively, this research comes up with meaningful management implications for the financial sector management of Pakistan at the same time as their training and development departments, to design and plan the programs for their prospective employees to enhance their job performance by strengthening their level of emotional intelligence.