How work-family conflict and emotional intelligence of staff nurses affect their job performance: A correlational study

Abstract

Background: Work-family conflict is one of the human being issues that may be inevitable. The overlapping of home and work roles could interfere with the roles at home or cause problems at work. These conflicts have a negative impact on job performance. Nurses who are proficient in practicing emotional intelligence had a better capacity to handle stress and job performance. Aim:It was to assess work-family conflict and emotional intelligence in relation to job performance of staff nurses. Subjects & Methods: A correlational descriptive design was conducted on staff nurses (270), who answered a questionnaire measuring work-family conflict in addition to emotional intelligence, whereas their job performance was evaluated by their head nurses using an observation checklist. Results: The highest percentages of staff nurses had a moderate level of work-family conflict and a high level of emotional intelligence, and 59.6% of them had a good level of job performance. Job performance had a statistically significant negative correlation with work-family conflict which had a statistically significant positive correlation with emotional intelligence. Conclusion: Job performance is negatively affected by work-family conflict. Emotional intelligence has a larger effect size than work-family conflict on job performance among staff nurses as emotional intelligence has a large effect size on their job performance compared to the moderate effect of work-family conflict. Both of them have a low effect size on each other. Recommendations: Training staff nurses targeting job performance skills improvement besides work-family conflict management and how to use the high level of emotional intelligence ability to improve are recommended.