The Relationship Between Workplace Loneliness And Job Performance

Objectives: with the development of social economy and technology,the way people work and work situation has changed,intelligent mobile office and the emergence of virtual team makes employees mainly through the network media information,reducing the chance to work and communicate face to face,played down the workplace relationships,with emphasis on efficiency and competition,focus on performance and results comparison,makes difficult to have a sincere exchanges between members of the organization and to form the satisfactory relationship to meet the needs of social and workplace loneliness problem increasingly prominent.Under this background,based on conservation of resources theory,taking employees from state-owned enterprises,private enterprises and foreign joint ventures as research objects in the research,to explore the impact of workplace loneliness on job performance,as well as the role of work engagement and emotional intelligence in this effect.Methods: 《 Loneliness at Work Scale 》 compiled by Wright(2006),《 Job performance scale》integrated by Yanzi Wang(2009),《Work Engagement Scale》compiled by Schaufeli(2006)and 《Emotional intelligence scale》compiled by Wong and Law(2002)were used in the research.Using convenient sampling methods,431 employees in Guangxi,Guangdong,Hunan,Chongqing and other regions were effectively selected for surveys.SPSS 20.0 statistical software and its plug-in PROCESS v3.3 were used to analyze and verify the collected valid data.Results:(1)Employees’ felt a low-to-medium level of workplace loneliness,they also had a high level of work engagement,job performance and emotional intelligence.(2)The correlation analysis showed that workplace loneliness was in negative correlation with work engagement,emotional intelligence and job performance.There was a significant positive correlation between each two of work engagement,emotional intelligence and job performance.(3)The regression analysis showed that the workplace loneliness and each dimension had an obvious negatively predictable function to job performance;its had an obvious negatively predictable function to work engagement;the work engagement and each dimension had an obvious positively predictable function to job performance;the work engagement had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between workplace loneliness and job performance on the employees;emotional intelligence had moderating effect between workplace loneliness and work engagement.(4)Bootstrap analysis showed that emotional intelligence moderated the mediating effect of work engagement on the relationship between workplace loneliness and job performance,thus showed the moderated-mediation effect.Conclusions:(1)Loneliness in the workplace will reduce employees’ work engagement and job performance.(2)Employees with higher levels of emotional intelligence are better at adjusting their emotions,adopting positive strategies to deal with workplace loneliness,alleviating the negative emotional problems,and buffering the negative impact of workplace loneliness on work engagement.(3)The mediating role of work engagement between workplace loneliness and job performance is moderated by emotional intelligence.The mediating role of work engagement is stronger when the level of employee’s emotional intelligence is weaker and the mediating role of work engagement is weaker when the level of employee’s emotional intelligence is stronger.