HARDINESS AS A MEDIATOR : RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND WORK ENGAGEMENT

Abstract

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government issued a new policy in the form of social distancing which aims to reduce the number of spread of the Covid-19 virus. This policy has a big impact on employees, where employees must be able to adapt back to normal activities during the pandemic to endemic which is the cause of decreased work engagement for workers. This study aims to determine whether hardiness has a role as a mediator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and work engagement in employees during the transition from the pandemic to the Covid-19 endemic. This study uses a quantitative method through the mediation regression process and accidental sampling technique, as many as 667 employees who worked in JAKARTA during the transition from the pandemic to the Covid-19 endemic response to a questionnaire from the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) measuring instrument developed by Schaufeli & Bakker, Wong. and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) developed by Wong & Law, and Hardiness Resilience Gange (HRG) developed by Kobasa. The analysis of the mediation regression process in this study used the PROCESS V3.5 Procedure for SPSS by Andrew F. Hayes. The results show that hardiness acts as a mediator of the relationship between emotional intelligence and work engagement, this shows that emotional intelligence and work engagement will increase with the role of hardiness. This research is expected to provide a reference for workers and companies regarding the importance of understanding the values of hardiness, emotional intelligence and work engagement so that they can understand the individual's ability to adapt to career changes during the pandemic in order to increase employee work engagement with the company.