Emotional intelligence, job satisfaction, work engagement and turnover intentions of employees in selected South African organisations

摘要

The retention of skilled employees is crucial for the success of South African organisations.An understanding of the influence and relationships of employees’ emotional intelligence, jobsatisfaction and work engagement on employee turnover intention is necessary. The aim ofthe study was to explore the relationships between emotional intelligence, job satisfaction,work engagement and turnover intentions of employees in selected organisations.The authors’ applied a cross-sectional survey design. Convenient samples of employees weredrawn from five volunteering organisations in the Durban area of South Africa (N = 274) soas to ensure a sample size in excess of 200 for the purposes of applying structured equationmodelling. The organisations included two private higher education institutions, amanagement consulting/outsourcing company, an information technology company and apackaging company. They administered the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale, the JobSatisfaction Scale, The Work Engagement Scale and the Turnover Intention Scale.The effect of emotional intelligence upon the job satisfaction and work engagement ofemployees in explaining their turnover intention could not be established. Emotionalintelligence was found to have a significant effect on the work engagement of employees butnot job satisfaction. Job satisfaction had a significant effect on the turnover intention ofemployees.