Sexual Harassment And Employee Performance: The Mediating Role Of Psychological Distress And Employee Engagement

Abstract

Although the Job Demand-Resource theory emphasizes that all jobs require physical and mental efforts, which could be derailed by sexual harassment, leading to psychological distress; a phenomenon that could be conversely reduced through job resource or support in the form of employee engagement, studies in the sexual harassment literature have largely focused on the direct effect of employee sexual harassment on employee performance, without much emphasis on the potential mediation role psychological distress and employee work engagement. This study therefore investigated the mediation role of both psychological distress and work engagement in the influence of employee sexual harassment on employee performance. The explanatory study surveyed 256 employees of the banking sector in the Kumasi Metropolis using structured questionnaire. Data in IBM SPSS Version 25 was imported in free format to LISREL 8.50 for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Developed hypotheses were tested through partial least squared structural equation (PLS-SEM) modeling. The results showed that without controlling for psychological distress and employee work engagement, sexual harassment in the banking industry positively and significantly influenced employee performance. Both psychological distress and work engagement partially mediated the effect of sexual harassment on employee performance. The partial mediation of both work engagement and psychological distress on employee performance was positive, notwithstanding the negative and positive influence of sexual harassment on work engagement and psychological distress of employees respectively.