Do emotionally intelligent female employees perform better on the job? A serial mediation model

PurposeThe paper aims to examine the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction in the emotional intelligence (EI) and job performance (JP) relationship.Design/methodology/approachThe data have been collected using a structured questionnaire from 527 females working in education, health and IT/BPO sectors across three cities of Punjab, India. A serial multiple-mediated regression has been used to estimate EI's direct and indirect effects on JP mediated through emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction.FindingsThe findings reveal that EI has an indirect positive effect on JP through its influence on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction in serial. The results also suggest that the control variables (namely age, qualification, experience and income) have a limited effect on EI, JP, emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction of female employees.Practical implicationsThe present study asserts that organizations should seek employees with high EI to have high employee performance. The study assists supervisors and human resource (HR) managers in their different functions like recruitment and selection decisions, training and development activities, and designing high-performance work systems. Enhanced EI will improve mental health and well-being, which further drives positive work behaviors.Originality/valueThis study attempts to examine the EI–JP relationship for working females in more depth. Since the study is based on an Indian sample, it adds to the growing literature on EI and JP of females in the context of non-Western countries. The results are of great value to HR managers and practitioners who aim to develop practices that would increase the performance of females in the workplace.