Introduction:

Emotional intelligence is a decisive factor for adaptation to the work environment.

Objective:

To inquire into the employment location and the correlation between perceived quality of work life, emotional intelligence and stress coping strategies in graduates of a university from Manizales.

Materials and methods:

Analytical cross-sectional design. From a population of 1 245 graduates, 149 were asked about their working conditions using the CVP35 questionnaire on quality of work life, the TMMS-24 questionnaire on emotional intelligence, and the CRI-Y questionnaire on stress coping strategies.

Results:

88.6% of the respondents work; 51.7% of them have a fulltime job. In the CVP35, 53% of the participants were classified in the "quite a lot" category for the workload domain, 63.1% for the intrinsic motivation domain, 51.7% for the managerial support domain, and 4% for the perceived quality of life domain. Regarding the TMMS-24 questionnaire, 59.1% should improve their perception, 48.3% have an adequate level of comprehension, and 51% have adequate regulation. The level of emotional intelligence positively influences both the perception of quality of work life (QWL) and the type of stress coping strategies that are used.

Conclusions:

Emotional intelligence has a significant influence on young professionals' perception of QWL, and thus on their work performance; therefore, their comprehensive training requires the inclusion of emotional competences in the different curricula in order to counteract the negative effects of work stress to improve their perception of QWL, so that, this way, they have a better work performance and a higher productivity when they enter the labor market.

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