Does thriving at work and employee agility are essential ingredients for organizational performance of banking sector?

Purpose Thriving employees are of an emergent nature, growing and animated instead of stagnating or feeling depleted and are specified by the mutual experience of learning, acquiring new knowledge and skills, and vitality, such as being alive, excited and passionate. The purpose of this research work is to identify workforce and organizational performance issues. This work also elaborates on the mediating role of agility, since agile employees have strong skills to cope with change. Design/methodology/approach The research was conducted as a survey-based study, where data were collected from 382 white-collar employees working in the banking sector of three metropolitan cities of Pakistan, i.e. Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The statistical measurements, i.e. reliability, validity and structural equation modeling technique, were performed on the acquired data through SPSS and AMOS. Findings The outcomes exhibit that thriving at work is a valuable antecedent for both employee agility and organizational performance. Moreover, employee agility is a strong mediator between thriving at work and organizational performance. Furthermore, thriving and agile employees are necessary for the enhancement of banking sector performance. Originality/value This particular research effort will contribute to the literature, as it is an initial effort in the South Asian and banking sector context.