Emotional Intelligence, Work-Life Balance, and Work-Related Well-Being: A Proposed Mediation Model

The present study aims to review the existing literature relating to Emotional Intelligence (EI), Work-Life Balance (WLB), and work-related well-being in order to build a model depicting relationships between these variables. For this, various theoretical and empirical studies, which specifically addressed these variables, were examined to build arguments and propositions. These arguments lead us to propose that EI is a vital construct that impacts WLB and various dimensions of work-related well-being, which are, job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress. Further, it suggests that WLB mediates the relationship between EI and work-related well-being. Thus, the paper presents a mediation model depicting linkages between these three variables. It builds an integrative model which will help theorists and researchers to extend literature on work-related well-being and will assist organisations in designing their human resource policies and practices.


Introduction
The expression 'emotional intelligence' has become analogous to mental health and happiness. This term comprises "the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth" (Mayer & Salovey, 1997, p. 10). Owing to its tremendous capabilities, this term is now increasingly being used and researched upon by human resource managers, practitioners, and is equally widespread in academic research. It is often said that emotional intelligence can be the most potent weapon in our armoury (Tredgold, 2016), and that can enable one to get the better of adverse situations. EI is also considered as the most important predictor of job performance and 90% of the top performers in workplaces are said to be those who possess high EI (Talentsmart, n.d.).
Skilful and dexterous human force is one of the most desired and essential components that help companies to achieve their objectives and goals (Khalili, 2011). But 21 st century workplaces have become highly competitive and employees are under continuous stress to innovate. No doubt, reaching optimum workforce productivity is one of the most daunting challenges for any organisation. As a result, the focus of human resource managers has been shifting towards concepts like employee well-being, Work-Life Balance (WLB), etc. as they lead to enhancement in employees' efficiency and productivity. Among these, employee well-being which is broadly defined by Grant et al. (2007) as the "overall quality of an employee's experience and functioning at work" (p. 52) has three core dimensions, namely psychological, physical, and social well-being. WLB is "the individual perception that work and non-work activities are compatible and promote growth in accordance with an individual's current life priorities" (Kalliath & Brough, 2008, p. 326). EI of an individual is considered to reduce work-family conflict, thereby improving their WLB (Carmeli, 2003). In a survey titled 'Understanding Work Life Balance' conducted on 2000 Indian professionals, it was found that 67% of them think about their work when they are not at work and more than 50% of professionals have an average to terrible WLB (Basu, 2019). It is also a well-known fact that WLB contributes to employee health and well-being and helps reduce stress and prevent burnout in the workplace (Zheng et al., 2015). Here, it is worthwhile to note that employee burnout is a problem more for the company than for the individual because the psychological and physical problems of burnt-out employees, cost an estimated $125 billion to $190 billion per year in healthcare spending in the United States (U.S.) alone (Garton, 2017). Therefore, WLB is an important aspect of a healthy work environment that should not be ignored by organisations.
As will be explained later in the literature review, EI helps in maintaining good WLB, which, in turn, is seen to have a positive effect on well-being of employees. Thus, it can be said that EI, WLB and well-being are inter-related in some way which is simple yet complex. The complexity of this concept is evident when we think about a person's EI, which comprises various traits and abilities associated with different components of organisational psychology. This gives rise to several questions: Do high EI individuals have high work-related well-being? Are those with high EI inherently satisfied by their jobs, and do they show good work engagement and not easily fall prey to job stress? Alternatively, does high EI lead to better WLB which in turn helps in achieving high job satisfaction and engagement while reducing stress at the same time? How can a person manage to have both a satisfactory personal life while being a high performer delivering excellent results, simply on the basis of high EI, keeping in mind the limited resources of time, energy and money? Are these relationships mutually exclusive or a part of a larger set? Various studies have attempted to examine these questions individually and collectively, but comprehensive study of emotional intelligence and its consequences is largely missing. The literature on EI is vast but few studies have integrated EI and its impact on WLB and dimensions of work-related well-being such as job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress. Therefore, this paper aims to overcome this critical gap in the current literature. The main objective of the study is to present a model of EI, WLB, and work-related well-being that builds on prior research work to determine the possible mediation effect of WLB on the relationship between EI and well-being dimensions.
This paper follows a systematic pattern. First, it presents an insight into EI and its relationship with WLB. Second, it provides a brief view about WLB and its relationship with various dimensions of well-being. Next, it describes the direct relationship between EI and work-related well-being. This is followed by depiction of how WLB mediates the relationship between EI and work-related well-being. In the end, a theoretical mediation model is proposed depicting linkages among all the three variables.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)
The origin of EI concept can be traced back to over 2000 years when Plato wrote that "all learning has an emotional base" (as cited in Wharam, 2009, p.7) but it was the psychologist E. L. Thorndike (1920) who gave its spirit a solid base. He was the first to coin the term 'social intelligence' which he defined as "the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls … to act wisely in human relations" (p. 228). Human relationships involve day to day interactions and relations of people with one another at work as well as at home, making social intelligence very crucial aspect of everyone's lives. In essence, social intelligence is the "ability to perceive one's own and others' internal states, motives, and behaviours, and to act toward them optimally on the basis of that information" (Mayer & Salovey, 1993, p.435). By the end of the 20 th century, social and educational schema was marked with EI as being more influential than the general intelligence. To understand this more comprehensively, the social intelligence theory was further advanced and numerous researchers and psychologists started contributing to this field. Gardner in 1983 extended the idea of social intelligence and delineated the concept of multiple intelligences in which he explored personal intelligence and found that it rests upon interpersonal intelligence (an ability of relating to others) and intrapersonal intelligence (an ability of understanding, motivating and managing the self). Salovey and Mayer (1990) devised the term 'Emotional Intelligence' and described it as "a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one's thinking and actions" (p. 189). The EI concept gained limelight through Goleman's (1995) book titled Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ? in which he explained why so many people with high Intelligence Quotients (IQs) are seen working for people with average IQs and validating that the smartness of individuals may have nothing to do with their IQ scores. EI has been investigated using different conceptualisations, the most popular ones being the ability-based model (Mayer et al., 2016), trait-based model and the mixed model (Petrides & Furnham, 2000). Although these conceptualise EI very differently, they all agree when it comes to explaining the relationship of EI with various psychological and psychosocial factors and influencing the work environments for managing and augmenting emotions, job attitudes, and outcomes among the employees at workplaces (Carmeli, 2003;Carmeli & Josman, 2006). Emotionally intelligent people are often more skilled to cope with life activities and they have positive as well as productive thinking which often includes affective awareness (Abraham,1999). In the context of the emerging 'affective revolution' in organisational psychology (Barsade & Gibson, 2007), EI is advocated as a principal predictor of chief organisational outcomes including job satisfaction (Daus & Ashkanasy, 2005), work engagement (De Kort, 2016), job stress, burnout and ill health (Alvi, 2018;Nikolaou & Tsaousis, 2002).

Work-Life Balance (WLB)
The expression 'work-life balance' was first used in the late 1970s to describe the balance between an individual's work and personal life. During that time, the world of work changed from 9 to 5 affair to 24 hours, 7 days a week regime, and saw increased women participation in workforce and dual earner couples (Voydanoff, 1987). WLB rapidly became popular because of the dynamic workplace changes and became a global phenomenon (Ashwini, 2017). This resulted in building up of the concept of WLB which was increasingly seen as a concern for both employees and employers (Guest, 2002). In a study indicating the holistic view of WLB, Sirgy and Lee (2018) divided the outcomes of WLB into three parts: work-related outcomes (e.g. high job performance, high job satisfaction, low burnout, low absenteeism, low turnover intentions, etc.), non-work-related outcomes (high life satisfaction, high family satisfaction, low conflicts with family members, etc.), and stress-related outcomes (e.g. low emotional exhaustion, low anxiety, low depression, etc.). In another study, Vajiravel (2015) stated that the positive effects of proper WLB include improved employee productivity and morale, work motivation, job satisfaction, improved health conditions and enough time for personal and family life while worklife conflicts, job stress, absenteeism, emotional exhaustion, high turnover, job switching, workaholism and health issues are some of negative effects of an imbalance in work life.

Work-related Well-being
Well-being refers to favourable psychological functioning and experience. Subjective Well-Being (SWB) encompasses happiness and life-satisfaction (Singh, 2015). There are various perspectives and categories of well-being. Steptoe et al. (2015) gave three aspects of SWB: evaluative wellbeing (or life satisfaction), hedonic wellbeing (feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and pain), and eudemonic wellbeing (sense of purpose and meaning in life). Hedonism and eudaimonism are the popular approaches of well-being. Since the publication of Well-Being: The Foundation of Hedonic Psychology (Kahneman et al., 1999), SWB is considered to be associated with the hedonistic approach to well-being and this type of well-being is frequently named as 'happiness' (Deci & Ryan, 2008). The view in this is that in order to maximise one's well-being, one should maximise the feelings of happiness. The second perspective Eudaimonia, involves more than just happiness, indicating that peoples' happiness (or satisfaction) may not necessarily indicate their psychological wellness (Deci & Ryan, 2008). The two can be distinguished on the basis of experiences of pleasure and good life where the former pertains to hedonic well-being and the latter to eudaimonic well-being (Singh, 2015).
Another view identifies three categories of well-being: (a) psychological wellbeing (employees' satisfaction level with workplace practices and processes), (b) physical well-being (employees' health outcomes e.g., from accidents or stress) and (c) social well-being (quality and quantity of workplace social networks, along with employees' perceptions of equity and fairness) (Grant et al., 2007). Psychological well-being is often used to measure work-related well-being of employees. From employees' perspective, it has been defined in various ways and has recently gained the attention of many researchers (Rothmann, 2008;Taris & Schaufeli, 2015) due to its capacity to predict employees' job performance (Devonish, 2016), absenteeism, turnover intentions and other work behaviours (Cropanzano & Wright, 2001;Randhawa & Nanda, 2017). It is also widely accepted to measure the success of an organisation (Garg & Rastogi, 2009). A study of work-related experiences must include experiences holistically, ranging from negative ones (e.g., burnout) to positive ones (e.g., work engagement) (Maslach et al., 2001). Various authors have considered burnout and work engagement as the aspects of work-related well-being (Jackson et al., 2006;Rothmann, 2003). According to Rothmann (2008), work-related well-being consists of job satisfaction, work engagement, occupational stress and burnout, while Soh et al. (2016) consider work engagement, job satisfaction and psychological stress as its components.

Literature Review and Conceptualisation
For developing the conceptual framework proposed in this paper, we reviewed the literature in a systematic manner. In this section of the paper, first we briefly elaborate the methodology adopted in reviewing the literature. Thereafter, with the help of the reviewed literature, arguments are built to conceptualise relationships among EI, WLB and the three dimensions of work-related well-being.

Review Methodology in Brief
Various review-based studies were referred, (e.g. Bandara et al., 2015;Mérida-López & Extremera, 2017), to understand the method for effectively conducting the literature search. Based on the information gathered from these studies, the method adopted in the present study consists of three steps: literature search, inclusion and exclusion criteria and data extraction.

Literature Search
In order to assess the body of literature on EI, WLB and work-related well-being represented by job-satisfaction, work engagement and job stress, a computerised information search was made on Emerald, Google Scholar, Scopus, Shodhganga and Wiley Online Library over the period from the 5 th to 15 th of December 2019. The aim was to find those articles which were published in English language between 2000 and 2019 and that contained "emotional intelligence" as a keyword or a term in the abstract or title along with the following terms: "work-life balance", "work-life conflict", "well-being", "work-related well-being", "job satisfaction", "work engagement" and "job stress". Furthermore, a manual search of reference lists was also done in order to complement our database of studies.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The studies which are included in the present paper are the ones that fulfill the following inclusion criteria. The first criterion was that the articles that depicted relationship between minimum two of these variables, namely EI, WLB, well-being, job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress, were included in the present study. However, given the broad range of different concepts understood under the term wellbeing, only articles pertaining to psychological well-being encompassing workrelated well-being with job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress as one of its components were included. Articles that focussed on other forms of well-being (like physical well-being, social well-being, etc.) or other components of work-related well-being (like organisational commitment, burnout, etc.) were excluded. The second inclusion criterion was that EI assessment tools must be based on an EI framework. This led us to include studies that evaluated overall EI or at least one EI dimension and helped to exclude articles which followed different theoretical approaches (e.g. emotion regulation, emotional labour, or coping strategies). The last criterion was that papers published between 2000 and 2019 were selected for inclusion. EI concept gained popularity in the last decade of the 20 th century and resulted in the formation of various different frameworks and models which lead to overlapping and sometimes confusing results. Gradually with increasing research taking place in this area of research, more clarity was built upon EI and its components that facilitated in fruitful results. Since EI is a comparatively newer concept, papers published between 2000 and 2019 were included in the present study. In the selection of papers, no specific journals were targeted, included, or excluded.

Data Extraction
After preliminary screening, a number of prospective studies were identified. However, many of them were common in different databases leading to their duplication. After eliminating the repeating ones, we got 130 articles. Thereafter, the titles and abstracts of these research papers were again screened to check if they meet the inclusion and the exclusion criteria. In this step, studies were eliminated if they do not include relationship between at least two of these variables-EI, WLB, workrelated well-being or its components, namely job satisfaction, work engagement, and job stress; or if the studies were not based on an EI framework. At the end of this selection process, 55 articles that properly met our inclusion criteria were selected. These research papers were then read in full and were rigorously examined to identify our final set of studies. These papers empirically and conceptually analysed the bonds between EI, WLB and work-related well-being's components, and also helped us to determine how the relationship between EI and work-related well-being changes with the presence or absence of WLB.

EI and WLB
EI has a significant effect on an individual's work life equation and it assists in maintaining a proper balance in professional and personal life (Shylaja & Prasad, 2017). It is even considered central to developing an individual's life-work balance (Koubova & Buchko, 2013). This is because a person with a higher level of EI possesses a larger potential to harness his or her negative (positive) emotions (Brackett et al., 2006), so that such a person has skills to better reconcile both work and family roles and maintain WLB effectively. On these lines, a study by Gupta (2016) showed that EI has a negative relationship with work interfering family role conflict as well as with family interfering work role conflict. Numerous other studies have clearly shown that EI is positively and significantly related to WLB (Applewhite, 2017;Kumarasamy et al., 2016;Weinzimmer et al., 2017). On the basis of these studies, it can be said that in an organisational set-up, EI of employees impacts their WLB. Therefore, the following proposition can be put forward: Proposition 1: EI impacts on WLB.

WLB and Work-related Well-being
For the purpose of our study, we consider three components of psychological work-related well-being as given by Soh et al. (2016), namely job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress. The following section depicts the relationship of WLB with the three components of work-related well-being.
Job satisfaction. Judge and Kammeyer-Mueller (2012) defined job satisfaction as "an evaluative state that expresses contentment with and positive feelings about one's job" (p. 343). It is said to include multidimensional psychological responses to one's job comprising of cognitive, affective, and behavioural components (Hulin & Judge, 2003). Many studies have shown a positive correlation between WLB and job satisfaction (Kanwar et al., 2009;Malik, Haider, & Hussain, 2019). Various other studies have shown the direction of this relationship as well, in which WLB is seen to predict job satisfaction of employees (Haar et al., 2014;Kanwar et al., 2009;Malik, Saleem, & Ahmad, 2010). Based on this, the following proposition is suggested: Proposition 2a: WLB impacts on Job Satisfaction.
Work engagement. Work Engagement is defined as "a positive, fulfilling, workrelated state of mind that is characterised by vigour, dedication and absorption" (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). It is regarded as the positive antipode of burnout (Maslach & Leiter, 1997). Based on an extensive literature review, Shankar and Bhatnagar (2010) proposed that high WLB leads to high employee engagement in organisations. Empirical studies have also shown that WLB predicts employees' job engagement (Alvi et al., 2014;De Kort, 2016). In another study by Haar et al. (2017), WLB was found to be significantly related with the three components of work engagement, namely vigour (path coefficient = 0.33, p < 0.001), dedication (path coefficient = 0.37, p < 0.001), and absorption (path coefficient = 0.21, p < 0.01). Based on these studies that depict significant relationship between WLB and an employee's work engagement, the following proposition can be put forward: Proposition 2b: WLB impacts on Work Engagement. Job Stress. International Labour Organisation (2016) defines stress as "the harmful physical and emotional response caused by an imbalance between the perceived demands and the perceived resources and abilities of individuals to cope with those demands" (p. 2). The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (2009) has suggested that "work-related stress is experienced when the demands of the work environment exceed the workers' ability to cope with (or control) them" (p. 14). Perceived job stress is associated with poorer WLB (Bell et al., 2012). Chiang et al. (2010) in their study have shown that the three-way interaction among job demands, job control, and WLB is significant in predicting job stress (β = 0.14, p < 0.05). Various studies have also shown that a strong negative relationship exists between occupational stress and WLB (Alvi, 2018;Zaheer et al., 2016). Based on these studies, the following is suggested: Proposition 2c: WLB impacts on Job Stress.

EI and Work-related Well-being
Research on EI indicates that it is related to psychological well-being of which work-related well-being is a part (Devonish, 2016;Nanda & Randhawa, 2019). It is often considered that higher EI among employees significantly enhances their wellbeing at workplace. The following section depicts relationship of EI with the three dimensions of work-related well-being that are considered in the present study.
Job satisfaction. Employees with higher level of EI often depict more satisfaction from their jobs because they excel in appraising and regulating their own emotions as well as effectively manage the emotions of the people around them (Sy et al., 2006). Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between these two constructs and have found that EI is positively and significantly related to job satisfaction (Carmeli, 2003;Pau & Sabri, 2015;Rezvani et al., 2016;Yan et al., 2018). As far as different models of EI are concerned, the three most important ones, namely, ability model, self-report model and mixed model, have identified EI to be related to job satisfaction (Miao et al., 2016). Further, Gardner (2005) showed that EI relates to both facets of job satisfaction, i.e., external and internal job satisfaction, when considered separately. Therefore, we can assume that EI of employees helps in predicting their job satisfaction. On this basis, the following proposition can be put forward: Proposition 3a: EI impacts on Job Satisfaction.
Work engagement. In modern organisations, enhancing engagement levels of employees is essential because engaged employees are often considered to be more energised, dedicated and engrossed to persevere and complete their work (Schaufeli et al., 2002) and EI induces this energy and dedication in employees (Ravichandran et al., 2011). Various studies have depicted that a positive and statistically significant relationship exists between EI and work engagement (Mérida-López & Extremera, 2017;Thor, 2012;Zhu et al., 2015;Yan et al., 2018). In others, direct effect of EI on engagement levels of employees have been shown (Yan et al., 2018;Zhu et al., 2015). Even the individual dimensions of EI are positively correlated with each of the three engagement dimensions, (with correlation indices ranging from r = 0.15 to r = 0.40, and p < 0.001 in all cases as per Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2018). In the study by Durán et al. (2004), EI comprising of attention to feelings, emotional clarity and repair to moods have shown to be partially associated with the dimensions of engagement with emotional clarity being positively associated with dedication (r = 0 .25); and all engagement dimensions being positively associated with repair to moods (r = 0.20 for vigour; r = 0.30 for dedication; r = 0.36 for absorption). Therefore, the literature supports the effect of EI on work engagement. Hence, the following proposition can be put forward: Proposition 3b: EI impacts on Work Engagement.
Job stress. EI helps in influencing employees' responses and abilities required for handling varied organisational demands (Slaski & Cartwright, 2002). Employees with high EI often comprehend their emotions through cognitive reappraisal and employ various strategies like use of social resources and disclosure of feelings to deal with stress in organisations (King & Gardner, 2006). This helps to associate high EI with adaptability and resilience in stressful environments (Wu, 2011). Gardner (2005) found that utilisation of higher EI is related to the lesser experience of occupational stress, as well as to the outcomes of occupational stress (both health and attitudes). The empirical research has found that an inverse relationship exists between EI and job stress (Görgens-Ekermans & Brand, 2012;Mohamed & Nagy, 2017;Yamani et al., 2014) while EI also helps in predicting job stress (Karimi et al., 2013). These studies help to conclude that EI affects job stress of employees. This leads us to the following proposition: Proposition 3c: EI impacts on to Job Stress.

WLB Mediates the Relationship between EI and Work-related Well-being
High EI promotes eminent reconciliation of both the work and family roles and is thus vital for achieving WLB (Koubova & Buchko, 2013). This is supported by various studies. In a study on public-sector senior managers by Carmeli (2003), it was found that high EI helps managers to recognise their important responsibilities at work as well as at home, preventing them from neglecting their personal and family needs, which altogether makes them more careful of the inherent work-family conflicts and also makes them better conflict handlers. Lenaghan et al. (2007) reported that high EI serves as a key factor in handling work-family conflicts and also act as a positive influencer of well-being. Extremera and Fernández-Berrocal (2006) found that high EI assists in better coping with stressful events and helps to regulate negative emotions, along with being a predictor for maintaining and promoting one's social, mental, and physical health. In another study on EI and well-being by Carmeli et al. (2009), it was reported that individuals with higher EI depict higher levels of self-acceptance, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. It is, therefore, evidenced by prior research that employees who have high EI are more likely to effectively control work-family conflict (Carmeli, 2003). Thus, EI is highly instrumental in achieving and maintaining WLB of employees (Koubova & Buchko, 2013;Applewhite, 2017).
The consequences or the impact of WLB includes work satisfaction, life satisfaction, well-being, performance at work and home and impact on others at work and home (Guest, 2002). It also influences work engagement and stress levels of employees (De Kort, 2016;Zaheer et al., 2016). Presence of WLB measures like flexible work hours, work from home, etc. has often been linked to job satisfaction and organisational commitment for all employees with family responsibilities, especially women employees, regardless of whether they avail themselves of these facilities or not (Nelson et al., 1990;Scandura & Lankau, 1997).
Although various researchers in numerous setups have individually studied the above relationships, little research has been done so far on examining them collectively so as to portray that presence of WLB will greatly affect the EI-workrelated well-being relationship. It is crucial to understand that employees with high EI will depict more work-related well-being if they have better WLB. Stress and difficult emotions will not sway them as they can manage their feelings and emotions well, leading to better well-being. This paper, therefore, puts forward the following proposition: Proposition 4: WLB mediates the relationship between EI and work-related wellbeing.

Some Final Remarks
Previous research on EI confirms that emotions form the fundamental component of our feelings and behaviour, and recognises the significance of emotions in our everyday life (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002;Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). Therefore, emotions are involved in all the roles that we indulge in and they always influence our feelings and state of mind. These emotions are the building blocks of our behaviour and they make EI the most important form of intelligence which has varied outcomes, even to the point that it affects WLB and work-related well-being of the employees.
Despite a large volume of literature on EI, limited research has integrated EI and its impact on WLB and dimensions of work-related well-being such as job satisfaction, work engagement, and job stress (e.g. Applewhite, 2017;Carmeli, 2003;Mérida-López & Extremera, 2017;Yamani et al., 2014). Based on the previous literature on the relationships between these three variables, we surmise that their interplay is more complex than it may seem to be at first glance. The discussion of previous literature lead us to propose that EI is a vital construct that impacts WLB as well as different dimensions of work-related well-being. Furthermore, we also propose that WLB mediates the relationship between EI and work-related well-being. Figure 1 displays these relationships in a conceptual model. Erstwhile models have mostly taken into consideration only a few dimensions of well-being (Devonish, 2016) and have restricted themselves to direct relationships. Therefore, research on direct impact of EI on various dimensions of work-related well-being as well as indirect impact with WLB as a mediator to portray an integrative conceptual model with greater explanatory potential is the need of the hour. Hence, the model presented in Figure 1 depicts a more comprehensive picture of all these variables.

Theoretical Implications
The present study extends existing HRM literature on work-related well-being by showing that EI has direct relationship with its dimensions, namely job satisfaction, work engagement and job stress. It also suggests that EI is indirectly associated with work-related well-being through WLB as a mediator. This is relevant because prior studies have shown that different variables mediate the relationship between EI and the dimensions of work-related well-being, but, to the best of our knowledge, no research has so far examined whether WLB can also affect this association. Thus, the present paper builds an integrative EI -WLBwork-related well-being model, portraying the beneficial role of EI. In the broader research domain, this conceptualisation sets a foundation that can be used by researchers to provide a better understanding of the EI and well-being relationship as well as for exploring other mediating variables in this relationship. Overall, the study provides a richer and deeper understanding of various organisational and personal antecedents of workrelated well-being and consequences of EI and WLB.

Managerial Implications
The present study has important implications for organisations when designing their human resource policies and practices. For instance, efforts should be directed towards picking up candidates with higher EI during hiring, promotions, key transfers, foreign assignments, etc. This becomes more important in case of "jobs that demand high degree of social interactions" (Robbins & Judge, 2017, p. 159). Further, organisations need to keep tabs on EI of its workforce on a continuous basis by making EI a regular feature of training and development programmes to develop a competitive edge on the basis of an intelligent workforce. Furthermore, EI is a precursor in achieving WLB and an emotion experienced in the family domain can spill over into the work domain, subsequently influencing one's job satisfaction, engagement, etc. Thus, for a 'win-win' situation which contributes towards the growth and success of both the individuals and the organisation, attempts should be made to ensure that employees stay emotionally intelligent to maintain high levels of work-related well-being through striking a proper balance between their work and family lives.

Limitations and Agenda for Future Research
The present study has certain limitations. Firstly, though the paper is based on an extensive literature review, it is possible that some relevant/important studies may have been missed in identifying the suggested relationships in the study. Secondly, the study takes into consideration only work-related well-being. Other dimensions of well-being (e.g., professional well-being, social well-being, etc.) and its further effect on employee behaviour (such as job performance, absenteeism, turnover intentions, etc.) can be taken up in future research. Further, empirical research can be conducted to validate the relationships of the proposed model.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.