Assessing the Emotional Competencies of Information Technology Employees

Introduction

In the 21st century, where knowledge and attitude of employees assume more considerable significance than the physical assets and the accomplishment of these organizations is contingent on the quality of their Human Resource- its knowledge, skills, competence, motivation and accepting the organizational culture; it is imperative that the humans be recognized as an integral part of the total worth of an organization. Human elements are becoming more critical input for the success of any corporate enterprise. For organizations, it is becoming imperative to promote those emotions that will help to create and maintain effective, efficient, and productive organizational functioning in a sustainable way, as well as regulating and managing problematic situations. While the industry has significant headroom for growth, it is battling with a few issues at present. Many of the issues faced in organizations have a significant relation with individual emotions and their management.

To survive in the current scenario, the employees should enrich their Emotional quotient in par with their Intelligence Quotient. Intelligence Quotient alone will not bring growth and development to the economy of the nation, but it is the competent, committed, satisfied, and engaged workforce that leads to the effective utilization of resources. Earlier emotions were considered as disorganized responses and ignored by psychologists and behaviorists. In this millennium, psychologists (Salovey &Mayer,1990) argue that emotions of all sorts are potentially contributing to thoughts rather than disorganizing them. This change in perspective inspired the coining of the term “Emotional Intelligence” in 1990. Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer(1990) coined the term Emotional Intelligence as a “form of social intelligence that involves the ability to access one's own and others' emotions and feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use that information to guide one's thinking and action.” Since then, this concept has stormed the organizational context, leading to various empirical works. Emotional Intelligence can play a vital role in the personal and professional success of individuals.

From the review of previous research(Luong, T. T., Sivarajah, U., & Weerakkody, V.(2019); Feyerabend,R.,Herd,A.M.,&Choi,N.(2018);Gupta,(2017);Bhalerao,H.,&Kumar,S.(2016); GunavathyD.J.,&Ayswarya,M.R..(2011);Jena,L.K.,Pradhan,S.(2018);Boyatzis(2007);Callahan (2000);Clore(1998);Goleman(1996);Koydemir, S.,Şimşek, Ö. F., Schütz, A., & Tipandjan, A. (2013), it was evident that there is a dearth of Emotional Intelligence research in India. Specifically, the IT sector was not focused upon. It was also found that previous research on EI focused more on the benefits to the organizations rather than benefits to the individuals (Bar-On & Parker, 2000). With this lacuna in mind, the present study focused on assessing the Emotional Competencies of the employees of the IT sector in India and bringing out the impact of Emotional Competencies on their Career Satisfaction, Person organization Fit.