Emotional intelligence, emotional labour and employee engagement among non-academic university staff

Given the robustness of workplace engagement in determining motivation and satisfaction, it became eminent to identify the factors that could catalyse such among non-academic staff of Nigerian universities. This study therefore sought to unravel the interactions of emotional intelligence, emotional labour and employee engagement among non-academic staff of a selected University. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted and data gathered from randomly selected one hundred and seventy-six non-academic staff in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Gender distribution revealed that 65.9% of the respondents (116) were males, while 34.1% (60) were females. Four hypotheses were tested using parametric statistics at .05 level of significance. Findings revealed that collectively, emotional labour and emotional intelligence predicted only 5% of the variance in employee engagement; only emotional intelligence independently predicted employee engagement. Finally, collectively, socio-demographic factors (age, educational experience and work experience) predicted 20% variance in employee engagement; the independent contributions of age, educational experience and work experience were significant in the model. The study concluded that emotional labour when alone cannot make a significant impact on work engagement unless when paired with emotional intelligence. Hence, only non-academic staffs of universities who are emotional intelligent can successfully combine emotional labour to produce a high level of engagement. The study recommends that emotional intelligence training be included in the regular training/workshop requirements for university non-academic staff.