Emotional intelligence: how innovating may affect stress in the working environment

Abstract

Being productive and effective at the workplace has always been crucial. Precisely the way the working personnel perceive this objective requires not only effort, but also a clear state of mind on a daily basis, instrumental to cope with day-after-day challenges. Heretofore, studies on the emotional field in relation to Emotional Intelligence (EI) at the workplace have demonstrated that experiencing sane emotions at it is essential not only to be at ease with the sort and amount of work to address, but also not to suffer any type of emotional disorders and, therefore, to be able to project one’s full potential in the company. This project is aimed at fathoming the amount of stress of the working personnel of a leading Spanish tiles company by evaluating their emotional SelfAwareness and their Stress Management Emotional Quotient (EQ) strategies in order to detect possible improvements. To do so, TMMS-24 and COPE-48 tests were administered to the members of the international department of the company in question. Finally, three interviews with these participants are performed in order to interchange and subsequently analyze ideas about their current working environment and possible changes regarding a qualitative perspective to be combined with the quantitative one obtained in this study. This project therefore concludes that certain innovations at the workplace might be primordial for worker’s emotions, which eventually make positive or negative impact on the whole company. By means of, for instance, offering new stress relieving options —oriented to leisure entertainment— the working personnel’s Emotional Innovation and thus their Self-Awareness may increase, eventually improving their stress coping strategies. Thus, innovation is the core to develop in deeper levels the self-emotional knowledge of employees and ultimately to guarantee enhanced productivity and decreased stress levels for the whole company