Emotional intelligence and Job engagement as predictor of Job

stress among rescue workers

Submitted
To
Dr. Sadia Malik
Submitted
By
Mahira Zahoor
MS Psychology (I/O)

Department of Psychology
University of Sargodha, Sargodha
 Emotional Intelligence and Job Engagement as predictor of Job Stress in
Rescue workers

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship among emotional
intelligence, job engagement and job stress in rescue workers. The study also aimed to see if job
engagement and emotional intelligence predict the job stress in rescue workers. To accomplish
the objectives of this study three questionnaire were used. Emotional intelligence scale (WEMI,
2004), Job engagement scale (JES) developed by Rich et al. (2010) and job stress scale (SJSS,
Motowidlo, Packard, & Manning, 1986).

Study design: Cross sectional, questionnaire based.

Setting: Rescue 1122.

Keywords: Job stress, Emotional intelligence, Job engagement, rescue workers.

 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

As of late researchers have found out the significance of intellectual parts of salvage laborers,
notwithstanding the emotional and intelligence angles. Emotional intelligence and work
engagement turns into a significant determinants of achievement. Achievement in life might be
founded on the emotional part of representatives, and fundamental this view is the possibility
that individuals with high emotional intelligence (EI) and work engagement capabilities might be
bound to pick up progress at work, when contrasted with individuals with lower EI and work
engagement abilities. Numerous associations have understood this reality and this has supported
the human asset chiefs to think of systems for building up a workforce which is high on
'emotional remainder', to increase upper hand. Accordingly, we see a change in outlook from the
circumstance when the emotional intelligence, work engagement and job stress was viewed as
employee's/laborers concern. Be that as it may, today, the convergence of consideration has
moved to taking a gander at the life of a representative comprehensively as a way to elevate
authoritative adequacy and maintenance. There has been a creating design towards concentrating
on the impact of emotional intelligence and work engagement on job stress among rescue
workers.

Job engagement is a persuasive form that insinuates the status of delegates/workers to totally
contribute their physical, emotional and abstract en-slams in playing out their jobs in a careful
and synchronous manner (Kahn, 1990). Examiners and pros acknowledge that en-gaged
workforce is a key wellspring of advantage, since workforce having noteworthy degree of job
engagement is an amazing resource that is phenomenal, incomparable and non-substitutable
(Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman, Macey, and Saks, 2015).

In any case, the circumstance on ground shows that associations genuinely need connected with
work force. In different worldwide work-power studies, investigators report that associations
over the globe are encountering a genuine decrease in worker job engagement. As per Tower
Watson's report (2014), just 40% of representatives show job engagement with their work over
the globe. Making the circumstance additionally disturbing, Gallup (2016) ongoing examination
has discovered that lone 13% of the workers are occupied with associations around the world,
showing that the world has a genuine job engagement emergency with enduring ramifications for
the world economies.

The expression "emotional intelligence" has accomplished "popular expression" status because
of the achievement Of Daniel Goleman's book on the point distributed in 1995 (Fisher and
Ashkenazy, 2000;Jordan, Dasborough, Daus, and Ashkenazy, 2010; Nel and De Villiers, 2004;
Ramesar et al.,2009). The accomplishment of Goleman and others on the subject of emotional
intelligence bolstered the developing acknowledgment that feelings in the work environment are
deserving of study (Dahl and Cilliers, 2012; Fisher and Ashkenazy, 2000; Lopes and Salovey,
2004). The investigation of emotional intelligence inside associations in the 21st century appears
to be more applicable than any other time in recent memory because of the continually changing
nature of work and the worldwide monetary setting associations right now face (Castro and
Martins, 2010; Mendes and Stander, 2011). In 1990 Salovey and Mayer at first exhibited their
ability based conceptualization of emotional intelligence as a kind of social intelligence
including the ability to screen feeling in self just as others, separate among sentiments, and use
emotional information to coordinate thinking and direct (Jonker, 2009; Salovey and Mayer,
1990).Feelings are seen as inspirational powers coordinating and concentrating, with people
differing in their capacity and aptitude to do as such (Stuart and Paquet, 2001).

Emotional intelligence

Preceding the conceptualization of emotional intelligence, the ideas of feeling and intelligence
were examined and treated as independent, irrelevant ideas (Spector& Fox, 2000; Mayer, et al.,
2008). Research on the job of feelings at work concentrated on angles, for example, emotional
work, emotional articulation and the impact of mind-set in the work environment (Fisher and
Ashkenazy, 2000). Intelligence investigate concentrated fundamentally on general intelligence
and proportions of intelligence (Mayer, Caruso, Panter, and Salovey, 2012). A flood in
enthusiasm for numerous intelligences developed in the 1980's and 1990's after the distribution
of different intelligence hypotheses by Gardner and Sternberg (Mayer et al., 2008; Ekinci, 2014).
It was Salovey and Mayer (1990) who previously characterized the connection among feeling
and intelligence. On the natural level, a feeling is a concoction and neural reaction to an upgrade
(Badenhorst and Smith, 2007). Feeling is characterized as including changes in physiological,
engine abilities, conduct, perception and subjective experience because of the evaluation of
oneself or circumstance (Mayer et al., 2008). Feeling is seen uniquely in contrast to mind-set
given that it is knowledgeable about shorter terms and all the more seriously (Ramesar, et al.,
2009; Salovey and Mayer, 1990).According to Salovey and Mayer (1990),traditionalists believed
feeling to be complicated and problematic mental exercises which should have been controlled.
In any case, the developing perspective on feeling portrays feelings as valuable, supporting in
organizing activity, centering and propelling conduct and prompting enhanced individual and
social results (Mayer et al., 2008; Meisler, 2014). Applying the suitable emotional reaction in the
fitting setting could likewise be helpful to people. Indeed, even annoyance coordinated in the
correct ways can help people accomplish their objectives (Ford and Tamir, 2012).

Intelligence, then again, helps people to adjust to the earth and to adapt to life (Mayer et al.,
2008). Intelligence is commonly characterized as a psychological capacity or capacities that
takes into consideration the acknowledgment, learning, memory for and ability to reason about
different types of data and theoretical idea (Dahl and Cilliers, 2012; Mayer, et al., 2004; Salovey
and Mayer, 1990). In any case, conventional one-dimensional perspectives on intelligence are
viewed as excessively thin in scope and therefore hypotheses identifying with various
intelligences have developed (Davis, Christodoulou, Seider, and Gardner, 2011). For a build to
be viewed as an intelligence, it is commonly acknowledged that it must meet the accompanying
conditions: (1) It must be a psychological capacity and not an attribute, aura or non-scholarly
build; (2) it must be psychometrically connected with other known types of intelligence; (3) it
must be appeared to have a formative direction from youth to adulthood and (4) it must be a
particular type of intelligence (Boyatzis, 2011; Dahl and Cilliers, 2012; MacCann, et al., 2014;
Mayer et al., 2004).

Job Engagement

The term work engagement has taken an assortment of structures through the span of its history
relying upon the methodology of the different analysts and creators. Individual engagement and
disengagement (Kahn, 1990), work engagement (Maslach and Leiter, 2008) and all the more as
of late representative engagement (Harter, Schmidt, and Hayes, 2002; Simpson, 2009) are terms
utilized in the engagement examine writing. While terms, approaches and meanings of
engagement may vary, the improvement of the build has been driven by the view that upgrading
work engagement of representatives improves the upper hand of associations just as working
conditions and prosperity of workers. As indicated by Willard and Shuck (2011) work
engagement writing proposes that connected with representative’s experience positive work
results, are unafraid to depict their actual selves, and feel that they have the essential assets to
succeed. Associations with more significant levels of work engagement delighted in far higher
paces of accomplishment (Harter et al., 2002; Viljevac, Cooper-Thomas, and Saks, 2012).
Something contrary to work engagement – to be specific disengagement and burnout – predicts
results, for example, lower execution and high representative turnover (Shuck and Willard,
2010).

As per Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, and Taris (2008) and Bakker and Demerouti (2008) drew in
representatives perform superior to their partners since: They experience progressively
constructive feelings, for example, joy and happiness towards their work, they experience more
noteworthy mental and physical wellbeing and prosperity, they are increasingly open to work
openings and are increasingly hopeful and sure, they encourage the individual and job assets
required to support their own engagement and they move their engagement to others around
them.
Drawn in representatives show elevated levels of vitality, are excited about their work and are
submerged in the exhibition of their work and jobs (Bakker et al., 2008). Such people consider
their to be as satisfying, expressly fulfilling and testing rather than stressful and unrewarding
(Kahn, 1990; Saks, 2006). Connected with representatives are likewise increasingly dedicated to
their associations, take more prominent individual activity and are spurred to learn and create
(Botha and Mostert, 2014).

Job Stress

Job Stress (JS) alludes to one's emotional reaction to workplace that seems threatening to
laborers (Gill, Flaschner, and Shachar, 2006). The workplace in the accommodation business is
portrayed by long working hours, unnecessary remaining burden, and low compensation.
Besides, when cordiality workers go up against requesting and troublesome clients, they are
generally required to look with clients with a grin and invitingness so as to address clients' issue.
Late investigations have contended that such hierarchically expected feelings are firmly
identified with word related stress and burnout (Grandey, 2002; Morris and Feldman, 1996;
Tolich, 1993; Wharton, 1993). EI fundamentally adds to lessening job stress by better
distinguishing sentiments of dissatisfaction and stress and, therefore, directing those feelings. For
instance, representatives with high EI will in general have capacity to comprehend the reasons
for stress and to advance positive workplace which makes them endure less job stress (Cooper
and Sawaf, 1997).

Job stress, inside the setting of work environment wellbeing, alludes to a physiological condition
where business related obligations and duties become difficult and overpowering to the point that
it forces undesirable impacts on the psychological and physical health of representatives. The
workplace is consistently a raising ground for stressful conditions because of the relative select
guidelines and requirements doled out by managers. The contention of different character types
among agents and the fear of losing a wellspring of pay can moreover factor into making job
stress. Work stress has become a significant and huge factor in the present serious and quickly
evolving condition, which brings about considerable expenses to representatives and associations
(Cotton and Hart, 2003).

Stress can be characterized as the mental, physiological and social reaction by a person when an
absence of balance is seen between the requests and the capacity to adapt to these requests
(Palmer, 1989). It firmly impacts our own and expert lives. Stress is an innate piece of each
occupation and influences the job execution, contingent upon how it is seen and experienced. A
similar degree of stress can be seen contrastingly by officials prompting the distinctions in their
presentation. The experience of work stress has for some time been ensnared in the improvement
of negative results for the individual representative and the utilizing association. General
prosperity just as levels of fulfillment with and responsibility to the association has each been
distinguished in the writing as diminishing because of the worker encountering work stress. As a
result many stress the board intercession programs have surfaced in the writing, albeit none with
accentuation on using feelings all the more adequately. It is obvious that feelings may assume
even more a job in the stress procedure than recently suspected and it is sensible to contend that a
mediation concentrated on powerful use of feelings may essentially add to the decrease of the
negative results because of work stress.

CHAPTER 2

Methodology

Objectives

The point of the examination is to investigate the relationship of emotional intelligence, job
engagement and job stress among salvage laborers. What's more, to explore if emotional
intelligence and job engagement function as indicator of job stress in salvage laborers. In view of
the above after research were exactly tried right now:
Hypothesis

 There would be a causal impact of emotional intelligence and job engagement on job
stress.
 There would be no impact of emotional intelligence and job engagement on job stress
among workers.
 There would be a positive relationship among emotional intelligence, job engagement
and job stress.
 There would be negative connection between emotional intelligence and job engagement.
 There would be a negative connection between emotional intelligence and job stress.
 There would be a positive connection between job emotional intelligence and job
stress.
 There would be negative connection between job engagement and job stress.

Participants

Purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample. The sample consists of (n=200)
employees. Gender, marital status were the demographic variables. The sample was collected
from Rescue 1122 workers.

Research structure

Right now, investigate configuration was utilized to examine the effect of emotional intelligence
and job engagement on job stress among salvage laborers.
Operational definition of variables:

The three variables used in the study were emotional intelligence, job engagement and job stress.
The operational definitions of pertinent variables are as follows:

 Job engagement

This scale depends on the milestone work of Kahn (1990) who characterized engagement
as the outfitting of representatives' selves to their work jobs by contributing their
physical, emotional and subjective energies in concurrent and all encompassing way. As
per Kahn, physical engagement alludes to the degree of exertion representatives put in
while playing out their work jobs; emotional engagement is the emotional inclusion and
sentiments which the representatives have about their work; and intellectual engagement
is the care and mental consideration of workers towards with work.

 Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a form of intelligence described as the mental processes by

which individuals appraise and express emotions in themselves and others, regulate
emotions in themselves and others, and use emotions to adapt to their environment
(Salovey & Mayer, 1990).

 Job stress

So, job stress is a unique procedure wherein emotional intellectual examinations of job-
related stressors produce negative wellbeing or potentially social strain results. From this
general definition, researchers have created four points of view for understanding job
stress.
Instruments

Three instruments were used for the study. These instruments were used for the objective
measurement of variables including in the study. These three scales are:

Emotional intelligence (EI)

Job engagement (JES)

Subjective job stress (SJSS)

Procedure

By mean of gathering information and directing exploration, I reached with the concerned
specialists. Subsequent to getting official authorization, members were reached separately in
their particular settings. Being the scientist, by thinking about my duty, I attempted to raise the
assurance and enthusiasm of members by sharing goals and significance of this exploration.
Additionally, educated assent was given before taking expected data to keep it secret. I guarantee
the members to keep the data secret and utilizing the data for just investigation reason. Poll
alongside segment sheet, was given to the members. I encouraged the members in the event that
they have any inquiry with respect to the survey or on the off chance that they required greater
clearness in understanding the inquiries.

CHAPTER 3

Results
Table 1
Frequency and percentage of participants (N = 200)

Demographic variables f %

Gender

Boys 198 98.5

Girls 02 1.0

Marital status

Married 137 68.2

Unmarried 62 30.8

Table 1 shows that the percentages and frequency of participant’s marital status and gender.
Male participants (f= 198, 98.5%) and female participants (f= 2, 1.0%). Marital status of
participants is as, married (f= 137, 68.2%) and unmarried (f= 62, 30.8%).

Table 2

Mean, standard deviation and alpha reliability of study variables (N = 200)

Range

Variables M SD a Potential Actual Skewness Kurtosis

Job 29.01 4.62 .93 22-36 18-90 -.08 -1.4

engagement
Emotional
67.43 3.40 .67 55-74 16-96 -.33 -.32
intelligence
Job stress 11.93 1.71 .70 8-8 04-20 .03 -.39
Table 2 shows psychometric properties of study factors. The examination of dependability shows

that job engagement, emotional intelligence and job stress is .93, .67, and .70 separately which

shows that the inside consistency of all scales are good. The estimations of skewness of all scales

are beneath than 1 that shows ordinariness isn't problematic.

Table 3
Person correlation among all study variables (N = 200)

Variables 1 2 3

1. Job engagement -- -.648** -.430**

2. Emotional intelligence -- .334**

3. Job stress --

Note: ***p < .001, **p < .01

Table 3 show the Pearson correlation among emotional intelligence, job engagement and job

stress. The finding indicated that job engagement has negative relationship with emotional

intelligence (r = -.648, ***p <.001). And job engagement has negative relationship with

subjective job stress (r = -.430, **p <.01). Finding show that emotional intelligence has
significant positive correlation with job stress (r = .334, **p < .01). Thus, this table demonstrates

our fourth, 6th and seventh theory which is separately, there would be certain connection

between emotional intelligence and abstract job stress, there would be negative connection

between job engagement and job stress and there would be negative relationship job engagement

and emotional intelligence.

Table 4

Linear regression investigation portraying effect of emotional intelligence and job engagement
on job stress. (N = 200)

Outcome: Subjective job stress

95%
CI
Predictors Model B

LL,U
L
(Constant ) 12.617 [5.673, 19.560]

Job engagement -.136

[-.198, -.075]
[-.035, .132]
Emotional intelligence .048
 R2 .190
F 23.133

***p< 001

Regression analysis is computed with Job engagement and emotional intelligence as

predictor variable and subjective job stress as outcome variables. The R2 value of .190 indicates
that 1% variance in the subjective job stress variable can be accounted for Job satisfaction with
(F = 23.133, p < .001. The discoveries show that job engagement (β = -.136, p > .01) has
significant negative effect on job stress, and emotional intelligence has significant positive
relationship with subjective job stress.

CHAPTER 4

Discussion

Emotional intelligence of workers implies that there is no problem faced by the worker at the
workplace and he will continue to be a part of particular organization. Emotional intelligence
involves carrying out accurate reasoning about emotions, recognition and being at peace with
one’s life events and circumstances on the whole. This examination was directed with the reason
to discover the effect of emotional intelligence and job engagement on abstract job stress of
representatives/rescue workers.

This section deals with the hypotheses that are aforementioned. The tables in the results section
support the fourth, sixth and seventh hypotheses. Our results suggest that there exists a positive
relation between emotional intelligence and subjective job stress.
These results are in accordance with the findings of some previous researches, which found that
job engagement and subjective job stress have a negative relationship. Therefore, from the
results workers with emotional intelligence are satisfied with their job and are psychologically
well.

In order to achieve this purpose multiple statistical analyses were conducted including
descriptive statistic, Pearson correlation, reliability analyses, skewness, kurtosis and regression.
Reliability analyses illustrated that all scale has satisfactory alpha reliability. Skewness and
kurtosis values for all scales were also computed to test univariate normality of the instruments.
Skewness means symmetry of distribution is when compared to normal distribution of the same
variance and kurtosis mean the sharpness of the data (Pearson, 1916).

In current study all scales have skewness values less than 1. Brown (1996) suggested for
univeriate normality of instrument the value of skewness should be close to zero and must be less
than 1. So it has been concluded that there is not an issue regarding univeriate normality with any
scale used in the study.

Conclusion

The present study examined the impact emotional intelligence and job engagement on subjective
job stress of rescue workers. The examination which we led through SPSS 22 affirmed that the
there is a solid positive effect of emotional intelligence on abstract job stress of
representatives/workers and there is a negative relationship of job engagement and emotional job
stress. The examination is an adroit commitment on the subject of Psychological prosperity of
workers.

Limitations and Implications

Cross section research design of present study has limited us to give careful consideration and
study the causative relationships among variables which are under study. That is the reason
another concerned research was needed for the study of these relationships. As the presented
study which is being conducted, utilized self-report measures, they have a disadvantage that they
are susceptible for social desirability.

The present study is pretty insightful in understanding the phenomena of emotional intelligence,
job engagement and subjective job stress among rescue workers. The results of the study can
help the administration and authorities to better understand the psycho-social problems which are
faced by employees and tries to find groundbreaking ways to accept the challenges.

CHAPTER 5

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