Emotional Intelligence as a Predictor of Employee Engagement and Talent Retention in SMEs: Evidence from Chandrapur City

Abstract

Employee satisfaction and retention has become the issue of critical concern to the SMEs especially in the competitive and resource limited settings. The paper will evaluate emotional intelligence (EI) as the predictor of engagement of the employees (EE) and retention of the talent (TR) among the SME employees in Chandrapur City. The data was collected with the help of a structured questionnaire that was applied to 250 employees in case of a descriptive and analytic research design. Correlation and multiple regression analysis tools were the statistical techniques used to study the relationship among the study variables. The results indicate that EI positively affects the engagement of employees to a large extent and also directly affects TR. EE also shows a high positive impact on retention and partially mediates the operation between EI and TR. The findings point to emotional intelligence as an important participant resource which observably boosts the emotional doxin, EE, and corporate attachment. This research is relevant to the existing body of literature since it presents empirical data in an SME setting and postulates that emotional intelligence and encouragement of involvement could be valuable practice of enhancing the stability of the workforce and organizational performance.