Fostering Talent Retention Through Positive Work-Life Interactions: The Relationships Among Emotional Intelligence,...

The aims of the present study are twofold: (a) to develop and validate a multidimensional and bidirectional instrument to measure work-life enrichment (the MSW-LE), and (b) to examine the role of an emotional personal resource (i.e., emotional intelligence) in the relationships among work-life enrichment, affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. This two-stage study is conducted using two independent samples of 280 and 231 Argentinian employees across diverse occupations and industries. Findings show that the MSW-LE exhibits adequate psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency, dimensionality, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The results from the mediation analysis reveal that the hypothesized model provides an adequate fit to the data, χ2 (df = 29, N = 196) = 41.71, p > .05, CFI = .982, GFI = .960, TLI = .972, RMSEA = .047. Moreover, hypothesis testing demonstrates that the relationship between emotional intelligence and turnover intentions is sequentially mediated by work-life enrichment and affective organizational commitment. Taken together, the results indicate that emotional intelligence may activate emotional mechanisms that facilitate resource accumulation by fostering positive experiences of work-life enrichment and affective organizational commitment, which reduce employees' intentions to leave the organization. Thus, organizations may find that offering work-life enriching opportunities is an effective strategy for improving work experiences, retaining their most valuable employees, and lowering costs associated with turnover.