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Abstract
This study aims to analyze the effect of work stress and personal problems on employee productivity, with emotional intelligence as a mediating variable, among employees of PT Dexa Medica Semarang. An explanatory quantitative approach was employed using a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey. All 50 members of the population were included as respondents through a saturated sampling technique. Data were analyzed using two-stage multiple regression in SPSS, followed by the Sobel test to examine the significance of the indirect effects. The results show that work stress has a significant negative effect on employee productivity (β = -0.275; sig. = 0.001), while the direct effect of personal problems on productivity is not statistically significant (β = -0.212; sig. = 0.055), operating instead through emotional intelligence. Work stress and personal problems each have a significant negative effect on emotional intelligence (β = -0.303 and -0.449, respectively), while emotional intelligence has a significant positive effect on productivity (β = 0.688) and is the strongest predictor in the model. Both mediating pathways are significant at α = 0.01 (z = -3.024 for H6 and z = -3.327 for H7). The model explains 76.2% of the variance in employee productivity (R² = 0.762; Adjusted R² = 0.746).
Keywords: work stress, personal problems, emotional intelligence, employee productivity, mediation