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Impact of Emotional Intelligence and

Work-Life Integration on Job Stress
Dr. Ramar Veluchamy1, Samuka Choudhury2,
Sandip Dixit2, Sanjali Jha2
1
Assistant Professor, Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship,
Bangalore, Karnataka.
2
Student, Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship,
Bangalore, Karnataka.
E-mail Id: [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract
Employees need to focus on emotional intelligence along with
intelligent quotient to perform better in organizations. The
objective of the study is to find the relationship between
emotional intelligence and work-life balance on work stress and
the causes of job stress. Self-management by maintaining a
schedule and roster for all tasks helps an individual to maintain a
balance between emotional quotient and intelligent quotient.
Setting realistic and achievable goals for self at the workplace
helps a lot to have a stable emotional level to perform well at all
tasks. Empathizing with the situation and the team would help
maintain a stable emotional level to react to situations at the
workplace. Stress in the job would impact negatively on the
emotional intelligence of an employee where the performance
would be affected leading to fear of attrition of the organization.
Flexibility of work, Job rotation impact the stability of the
emotional level of an employee.

Keywords: Impact of EI on Work-Life Balance and Job Stress,

Job Stressors and Emotional Intelligence, Mental Health
Problems, Work Lifestyle Preference.

Introduction
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to analyze one’s own emotions and
manage them in order to communicate effectively, overcome challenges
and defuse conflict. Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence
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developed a model focusing on the capabilities such as self-control,
avidity, motivating oneself, and determination. Work-life balance refers to
the balance between professional life and personal life which should never
be ignored or undermined. Basic demographic variables would include
gender, age, education to investigate the impact of these variables on the
level of Emotional Quotient and job stress. According to Sternberg, the
major areas of Emotional Quotient to be focused on are knowing one's
feelings, emotion control, empowering oneself, emotion recognition, and
relationship handling. The study suggests that few gaps are to be
addressed in the literature that directly or indirectly affects the Emotional
intelligence of an employee at an individual level in an organization or at
work. Personal attributes would include the level of empathy of an
individual to measure the level of emotional intelligence. The gaps based
on work of an individual include job satisfaction, task performance, work
attitude, variation in occupational groups as well as work-family conflicts
which focused on the study. The above-mentioned attributes are also
correlated with each other at an organizational level. The occupational
group an individual belongs to defines the job stress or workload he/she is
into which impacts the job satisfaction on the type of task the employee
does. Task performance is impacted by the level of satisfaction/
dissatisfaction of an employee which impacts his performance at work
which leads to stress at work. There might be tedious jobs or tasks which
are to be accomplished by employees within a definite period. Some
occupational groups have target-oriented jobs that directly affect the
income of an employee. This can be only accomplished by the work
attitude an individual carries. “The Go Get it” attitude helps an individual
to achieve the target in a stipulated time which improves the task
performance leading to obtaining a high level of job contentment and low
level of job stress. Work-family conflict plays a major role in the
professional success of employee.

Gender: The composition of the working population in various

occupational groups has been subject to change rapidly in organizations
where the female workforce is increasing. Organizations need to be more
sensitive towards gender equality in terms of policies, career
opportunities, and fair treatment irrespective of gender for better work and
performance. Age: The more age, the emotional intelligence of an
individual tends to be higher. However emotional intelligence can always
be learned by remaining self-motivated, practicing extensively on the
learning part, receiving feedback, and continuously reinforcing newly
learned skills. Work-life balance: It has a direct impact on emotional

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intelligence wherein the millennials and Generation Y coming up in the
employment era find it a bit challenging to get a perfect fit in multiple
roles in one’s life. Organizations should encourage an achievable and
realistic work-life balance meeting the needs of both organization and its
employees herein directly lowering the attrition rate. Changing Legal
Environment: Organizations work under a legal framework where legal
issues are the potential sources of stress in an organization. Every country
has its own constitution to govern the framework and it's fascinating that
the constitutional provisions are modified time and again to suit the
external realities such as UN policies, international laws related to
business, governance etc. Organizations need to be more sensitive towards
the impact of legal compliance on employees, clients, and customers
hence aligning to legal norms, laws, and regulations such as labor laws,
intellectual properties, cyber laws etc. Social Structure and Support
Systems: It has been a social aphorism that the worst of the stress can be
managed if we have the best of support system! (Stress & work, 2013)
The organization should be providing good enough support systems so
that employees can give a long-term organizational commitment to reduce
the chances of break-ups and breakdowns with the organization. Mental
Health Issues: Job productivity depends a lot on the mental state of an
individual rather than the physical condition of the employee. The mental
health and the physical health of an employee are the two important
factors that determine the productivity level of an employee in the
workplace like the two sides of the same coin which states its importance.
As per CDC 24/7 report, it states that the treatment of mental health is 2 to
3 times more expensive than treating physical health, which surely states
its importance for the above topic of our research. People assume that
mental health problems can be solved. We need to share with others which
can help cure it to a great extent. Organizations should understand the
level of mental and physical limits of employees. An opportunity to tackle
introversion will help workers solve issues with mental health. Mental
Health and its relevance in employee performance level is based on Job
performance affects productivity levels, Level of Engagement with one’s
work, Noises in the process of Communication with co-workers,
Performance of Physical capability and daily functioning and relation with
the fatigue rate in the workplace.

Occupational Group: There is a very thin line of difference between the

work behavior and the personal behavior of an individual due to the
overlap of the occupational interest and the personal life interest. This line
of difference must be extensive and emotional intelligence plays a vital

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role in this sector to identify the difference among diffused and specific
identity in the work-life balance. People tend to surround themselves with
the same occupational instincts which restricts them to have diversity
leading to an overlap in the behavioral pattern. Work-Family Conflict:
The rise of conflict happens when there is a rise in the differences in the
interest among the people in the workplace or the family space. The factor
of negotiation techniques are to be adopted to avoid such conflicts. The
Distributive approach or the interrogative approach is taken to manage the
conflict by Emotional Intelligence. It bases on the life roles of an
individual as well. There are 3 types of work-family conflict. Time-based
conflict: This conflict arises when there is not sufficient time allotted to
both work and families as the workload from both sides might vary and
might be more which won't suffice the time allotted to it. Strain based
conflict: This conflict does not mean direct competition for demands, but
rather a situation in which involvement in one domain results in physical
or psychological pressure, hampering job performance in the other domain
(Edwards & Rothbard, 2000). Behavior-based conflict: When there is a
conflict between one's behavior and one's expectation out of the role,
behavior-based conflict arises.

All the above types of work-family conflicts have negative impacts on the
mental and physical health of an individual.

Figure 1.Predictors of work-family conflict

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Feedback mechanism of organization: The feedback mechanism of an
organization is highly impacted by the core values of the organization
which impacts the emotional intelligence of the employee at an individual
level. If an employee is criticized for his work in a meeting in front of his
colleagues he might not be more enthusiastic on his improvement which
will cause job stress hampering the job performance at an individual level.
Social loafing can be a side effect of this attribute. Parenting: There are
cases of single and working parents who face difficulty balancing
professional and personal life which leads to work-family conflict. In the
case of parents having infants can have their emotional intelligence
impacted more. Organizations need to develop employee’s emotional
intelligence skills to work effectively in the organization to be successful.
“To achieve work-life balance, one must develop emotional intelligence
your ability to monitor your own and other’s feelings and emotions, to
discriminate among them and to use this information to guide your
thinking and actions”. Employees should be encouraged to enhance their
emotional intelligence traits along with their technical skills to excel in
any field or organization. This conceptual framework helps in identifying
the variables of research and its effect on the trait of Emotional
intelligence and job stress. The literature review shows a very strong link
between emotional intelligence, work-life balance, and job stress for
workers employed globally in an organization. The context of emotional
intelligence and work-life balance is very divergent impacting job stress,
organizational citizenship behavior, task performance, etc. of an
employee. There has been a dearth of literature in establishing whether
emotional intelligence can have a positive or negative orientation
approach to mediate the relationship between work-life balance and job
stress. Dalip Singh (2000) mentioned that the application of emotional
intelligence supports the managers and employees to recognize and
understand emotions and to manage oneself and his/her relationship with
others. In the era of changing practices in various occupational groups
have stimulated the interest of an organization to measure the attributes
and behavior of their employees and their perceptions about work and
life.75% of the success of an organization or performance of an employee
is accounted by emotional intelligence and other assessment such as social
and emotional competencies including communication, sensitivity,
interpersonal skills, and initiative. (Thornton, Byham, 1982).

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Research Methodology
The research is both quantitative and qualitative study to focus on
emotional intelligence and its effects on work-life balance on job stress of
individuals belonging to various occupational groups. The research was
conducted on the trait model of emotional intelligence consisting of Job
stress, Job satisfaction, Task performance, Time management,
Compensation benefits/ payroll, Workload. The research objective is to
establish a relationship between trait emotional intelligence, work-life
balance on job stress based on the various attributes which consist of
organizational and individual. Hypotheses are Emotional intelligence has
no significance on job stress, Emotional intelligence of an employee has
no significant impact on job satisfaction, Emotional intelligence does not
correlate with the task performance of an employee in an organization,
Emotional intelligence does not impact time management, Emotional
intelligence has no impact on the compensation and benefits or payroll of
an employee, Emotional intelligence of an employee is not impacted by
the workload or the type of work he/she does.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

The demographic profile of employees includes various occupational
groups including the public sector, private sector, and state government.
The age of employees ranged from 18-58 years. Various respondents had
work experience of a minimum 1 month to 30 years.

310 respondents’ data is taken into account however more no. to be

considered for analysis. The marital status of the respondents was taken
into account during the study. The working hours and the social time of a
person were taken into account. Questions were related to working hours
of companies, ability to balance the work and life, time available to spend
with family, work pressure in holidays, stress level of work, flexible
working hours, and efficiency during flexible schedule, health condition,
efficiency and work duration, time available for family gatherings. A
question asked to prioritize four things career, health, family, and wealth.
Work-Life Balance depends highly upon Satisfaction with the working
hours of the company. Work-Life Balance depends highly upon the
pressure of working overtime, the flexibility of the schedule, attending
social gatherings. Work-life balance seems to have lesser significance
with H and B = the stress of work even at not being in the workplace and
marital status.

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We can reject all hypotheses which state that they are significant with
work-life balance. Adjusted and multiple R squared is 88% means the
model is good. RSE is 0.17 which means it’s low, and most of the data lie
near the mean with + or - deviation of 0.17 with 7 degrees that is (11-2)
having very few outliers.

H1: From the findings, we see that ‘Work-Life Balance’ is highly

statistically significant with Satisfaction with the working hours of the
company. This means an individual must balance his/her personal as well
as professional life. Individuals tend to be satisfied with work hours
spanning from 4 hours to 7 hours. Hence we accept the alternate
hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis in this regard. H2: Work-Life
Balance depends highly upon the pressure of working overtime, overtime
working hours seem to drastically impact the productivity and emotional
health of an individual. H3: Work-life balance is highly statistically
significant with the flexibility of the schedule: with lesser deadlines and
works pressure. Hence we accept the alternate hypothesis. H4: Work-life
balance Depends on highly with attending the social gatherings. Meeting
friends and getting together is a tonic work productivity. When employees
feel social at the workplace then their emotional intelligence and quotient
seem to be higher. Hence based on the significance score we accept the
alternate hypothesis and reject the null hypothesis. H5: Work-life balance
seems to have lesser significance with - the stress of work even at not

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being in a workplace. H6: Work-life balance seems to have lesser
significance with marital status. Family men tend to have a lesser work-
life balance and need the most of it in their life.

The adjusted R-squared may be a changed version of R-squared that

adjusts for predictors that aren't vital in a very regression model.
Compared to a model with further input variables, a lower adjusted R-
squared indicates that the extra input variables aren't adding worth to the
model. The Adjusted R-squared is half of 1 mile which suggests the model
is nice. The variables square measure vital and adding worth to the
observation. Multiple R square tells you the way sturdy the linear
relationship is. for instance, a worth of one suggests that an ideal positive
relationship, and a worth of zero suggests that no relationship in the
slightest degree. it's the root of r square. Here the worth is ninety six
suggests that the model is well related . To calculate the full variance,
you'd work out the common actual worth from every of the particular
values, sq. the results and add them. From there, divide the primary add of
errors (explained variance) by the second add (total variance), work out
the result from one, and you have got the R-squared. associate degree F-
test is associate degree applied math take a look at during which the take a
look at datum has an F-distribution underneath the null hypothesis. it's
most frequently used once comparison applied math models that are fitted
to a knowledge set, to spot the model that most closely fits the population
from that the information were sampled. The F- datum is equal to eleven
and is nice and quiet one. P-value is small: indicating the model to be
smart and vital. The P-value should be as tiny as lesser than zero.05 and
therefore the F worth should be as giant to depict that the model in a very
study is nice. There’s a zero.15% probability we might see the mean
longer because of random noise. The lower the p-value, the a lot of
purposeful the result as a result of it's less doubtless to be caused by noise.
The residual normal error is that the variance of the residuals – Smaller
residual normal error suggests that predictions square measure higher. The
R2 is that the sq. of the coefficient of correlation r – Larger R2 suggests
that the model is healthier. The RSE is zero.17 on seven degrees of
freedom.

Recommendations and Managerial Implications

Place of work should be pleasant, safe and sanitary. The culture of
organizations should help employees to express creativity on the job.
Organizations should care for the employees and welfare of their family.

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Employees should be rewarded based on performance. Self-awareness is
an integral component of an individual’s mental state. Core self-
evaluation of an individual's character is necessary at the workplace to
evaluate the current state of mind. Understanding the parameters of self-
motivation is another key component or the driving force behind the
emotional stability of an individual during adverse situations. Employees
should identify factors give self-motivation. Organizations should help
employees to identify their potential strengths and develop skills for the
job requirements. Organizations should pay heed towards better training
of individuals on the soft values for excellence concept for the
profitability of both parties. The organization must coach their employees
in developing interpersonal skills and to perform effectively with other
employees within the organization. Organizations can consider to reduce
the working hours and also introduce flexible working hours to enhance
work life integration. Employees need to focus on emotional intelligence
along with intelligence quotient to perform better in organizations
contributing to personal development as well as better performance of the
organization inside out. There are various demographic attributes of an
individual that may affect the level of emotional intelligence which
broadly includes Gender, Age, Work-life balance, Changing Legal
environment, Social structure and support systems, Mental health issues,
Occupational groups, Work-family conflict, Feedback mechanism of the
organization, and Parenting. Self-management by maintaining a schedule
and roster for all tasks helps an individual to maintain a balance between
EQ and IQ. Setting realistic and achievable goals for self at the workplace
helps a lot to have a stable emotional level to perform well at all tasks.

Conclusion
Any individual’s action is dependent on his/her emotional intelligence.
Employee needs to be emotionally stable to perform well at the
workplace. Worklife balance is an important aspect for the stability of
emotional intelligence which directly affects the performance of the
individual and organization. Stress in the job would impact negatively on
the emotional intelligence of an employee where the performance would
be affected leading to fear of attrition of the organization. There are other
parameters including flexibility of work, job rotation which will impact
greatly the stability of the emotional level of an employee. There should
be a balance between EQ and IQ that should be maintained in an
employee’s mindset for better performance in an organization.

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Business and Management Research (Volume 1) Page 233
Empathizing with the situation and the team would help maintain a stable
emotional level to react to situations at the workplace.

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