Exploring the Relationship between Employee Engagement and Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Success of any organization largely depends upon its productive workforce. Research has demonstrated that emotional intelligence plays significant role in influencing the performance and productivity of employees at workplace. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and monitor one’s own emotions, ability to motivate one self and others and being empathetic to others. Past research studies focus on the importance and linkage of emotional intelligence with job satisfaction and its impact on the job performance and productivity. Still there is significant requirement of research to be conducted in the Indian context to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and employee engagement which has become the topmost challenge for the organizations in today’s world of cut throat competition. The paper attempts to investigate the relationship between employee engagement and emotional intelligence among service sector employees. For the purpose of data collection, questionnaires were administered among 92 respondents by targeting service sector organizations located in the region of Jalandhar. Pearson correlation analysis was utilized as a tool to determine the relationship employee engagement and emotional intelligence. The findings of the study indicated that out of four factors which define emotional intelligence viz well-being, self-control, emotionality and sociability, well being had a significant positive relationship with employee engagement while emotionality showed significant negative relationship with employee engagement.