The relationship between emotional intelligence and work engagement: A study in the banking sector on generations

Emotional intelligence is a concept that has been studied for 30 years and has proven its strong influence in every field which focus on people. Work engagement is a multidimensional concept, which has been put forward in the 1990s due to the influence of positive psychology, which draws attention with its enormous impact on the labor. The aim of our study is to examine the effect of the concept of emotional intelligence on work engagement and to evaluate both concepts in the context of X and Y generation which have a say in bussiness today. Our sample of the study was consist of 357 people, whose are working in a bank which is operates in Turkey. The bankers are working in İstanbul and the headquarters and branches of the bank. To measure the emotional intelligence levels and sub-dimensions of employees, we used Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale which developed by Schutte et al. in 1998. To measure the work engagement levels and sub-dimensions of employee, we used the short form of Utretch Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) consisting of 9 questions. The orijinal form of Utretch Work Engagement Scale devoloped by Schaufeli et al. in 2002. In addition, gender, age, working unit, time spent in banking, marital status questions were also included in the questionnaire in order to measure the demographic characteristics of the employee and to investigate in terms of the concepts of emotional intelligence and work engagement. "IBM SPSS 20" package program was used to analyze the research data. In the analysis of the data, we use Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin Test, Bartlett Test, Frequency Distribution Analysis, Reliabillity Analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov Analysis, Spearman Correlation Analysis, Kruskall Wallis H Test, Mann Whitney-U Test, Dunn's Test and Regression Analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that emotional intelligence and work engagement showed significant differences in terms of generations, marital status and time worked in the sector but it didn't show a significant difference in terms of gender and unit studied. There were also significant differences between the sub-dimensions of emotional intelligence and work engagement. The effect of emotional intelligence on work engagement sub-dimensions was investigated with multiple regression analysis and significant results were reached.