Unveiling the Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Relationship between Work-Life Balance and Performance. Insights from SMEs’ Smart Workers

The rise of smartworking has profoundly reshaped employees’ workflows by delineating the opportunity for a better work-life balance. Nevertheless, scholars underlined the risk for remote workers to experience stress and burnout due to the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life. In this context, relying on a manager able to understand and motivate is relevant for enhancing employees’ individual performance and contributing to a business’ survival. This is particularly crucial in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs), where employees’ performance can significantly impact business stability. Therefore, this study explores the role of emotional intelligence in SMEs by investigating its moderating effect between work-life balance and individual performance. A quantitative methodology was adopted, and a Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling was performed. A convenience sampling together with a snowball sampling technique was employed to collect data among employees. A total of 114 valid surveys from Italian SMEs were collected through an online questionnaire. The results confirm that smartworking affects work-life balance and work-life balance positively impacts individual performance. More interestingly, it emerges a positive and significant moderating effect of emotional intelligent leadership. This can open up to the valorization of emotional intelligence within firms as a strategic skill, both in public and private organizations, for handling employees’ emotions, thereby fostering their individual performance.