Article
The Impact of Employee Well-Being and Mental Health on Retail Employee Performance of North Karnataka
Employee well-being and mental health have emerged as critical determinants of workforce sustainability and organizational effectiveness in the retail sector. Retail employees frequently operate under conditions of high emotional labor, customer pressure, workload intensity, and performance monitoring, making psychological well-being essential for sustained employee performance. This study empirically examines the influence of employee well-being and mental health on employee performance, while investigating the mediating role of employee engagement in organized retail environments. The research adopts a quantitative, cross-sectional, and explanatory research design grounded in the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) Theory and Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory. Primary data were collected from 500 employees working in organized retail supermarkets through a structured questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS was employed to assess the measurement and structural models. The findings reveal that employee well-being and mental health significantly and positively influence employee engagement and employee performance. Employee engagement emerged as the strongest predictor of employee performance and partially mediated the relationship between psychological well-being variables and performance outcomes. Reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and model fit indices confirmed the robustness of the proposed framework. The study contributes to the growing literature on employee well-being by integrating psychological and engagement-related dimensions into retail performance research. Practically, the findings highlight the need for ethically grounded, technology-enabled, and employee-centered workplace strategies that enhance engagement, mental resilience, and sustainable organizational performance in contemporary retail settings.