Exploring the Role of Emotional Labor and Job Autonomy in the Relation Between Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance

Emotional intelligence has been found to play a vital role in successful performance of individuals, which leads to organizational effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to examine whether emotional intelligence can be a predictor of job performance and which dimension of emotional intelligence impact performance the most. This paper also aims to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance in the presence of two contextual factors viz., emotional labor and job autonomy, and whether the relationship between emotional intelligence and performance is stronger in case of sales jobs. The data for the study were obtained through a questionnaire survey of 400 employees working in three service sectors (insurance, banking, and telecom) in Guwahati, Assam. Emotional intelligence was measured using a standardized test consisting of 22-items. Employees' performance was measured based on supervisory ratings on a scale of 1 to 5. The results revealed that emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of workplace performance with emotional competency explaining the highest variation in performance (35%). The relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance was found to be stronger for individuals whose job involves greater amounts of emotional labor and for jobs with high autonomy, and for sales jobs. These findings have great implications for policy makers and human resource managers, as they can now understand the significant role emotional intelligence can play in the performance of employees in managerial positions whose job involves high autonomy and in the case of front-line service personnel whose jobs involves high emotional labor. Hence any effort on the part of HR managers to train service personnel on emotional intelligence will help these personnel to handle emotional labor and cope with emotional stress in a much better manner, thereby leading to lower employee turnover.