The relationship between employee mental health and job performance has been one of the key concerns in workplace. However, extant studies suffer from incomplete results due to their focus on developed economies’ contexts and the unclear path of employee mental health’s impact on performance. In this paper, we investigate the mechanism of employee mental health influencing job performance. We use the data of Chinese firms to test these hypotheses. Drawing on a sample of 239 firms from China, we find that employee mental health positively impacts job performance, and such relationship is mediated by innovative behavior and work engagement. The findings not only enrich the discipline’s knowledge on mental health in an emerging economy setting but also extend the implications of mental health, innovative behavior, and work engagement to job performance.

1. Introduction

Employee mental health has long been a topic of concern for researchers and practitioners alike [1]. One reason for this interest is that employee mental health is increasingly prominent within workplaces, which leads to significant costs including absenteeism, burnout, employee compensation claims, work–family conflict and low productivity [2,3]. In particular, with the outbreak of COVID-19, the uncertainties and fears associated with the virus outbreak, along with survival crisis of enterprises, lead to increases in employees’ mental disorders [4,5,6]. For example, Xiong et al. [7] found that people in China, Spain, Italy and five other countries had higher levels of symptoms of anxiety, depression, traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bufquin et al. [8] showed that since the outbreak, employees in the restaurant industry experienced higher levels of psychological distress and drug and alcohol use than furloughed employees. In this regard, it is timely to examine the influence of the mental health of employees on outcomes.

Recent studies have shown the relationship between employee mental health and different organizational outcomes, including employee emotional expression, job satisfaction, daily work behavior, job performance and firm performance [6,9,10,11,12]. Among these, the relationship between employee mental health and job performance has been an important research topic and has received more and more attention. Scholars suggested that employees with good mental health will show a positive working state and devote themselves to work tasks with more enthusiasm [13], whereas poor mental health may lead to inactivity at work and degradations in interpersonal relationships, which, in turn, negatively impacts employees’ work performance [14,15,16,17].

Although the relationship between mental health and job performance has been well-documented, there still remain some insufficiencies in the previous research. As a result, our extant knowledge on how employee mental health shapes job performance has remained fragmented and limited. First, the path of how employee mental health affects job performance is still unclear. The psychological characteristic–behavior–outcome framework indicates that although a strong individual attribute is important for an outcome, it does not automatically yield that outcome; instead, it influences outcome via appropriate behaviors. Second, such studies have been primarily conducted in Western economic contexts, whereas examinations in Eastern cultures such as China are lacking, which impedes upon the field’s global relevance. Studies have shown that culture, such as individualism and collectivism, will affect individuals’ mental health [18,19]. Therefore, the impact of mental health on performance may be different under different cultural backgrounds.

2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

2.1. Employee Mental Health

The World Health Organization [20] defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”. Over the years, researchers have developed a variety of operational definitions. For example, Ford et al. [13] suggest that mental health refers to an individual’s affective experiences and behavior. Montano et al. [16] define mental health as a continuum of neurophysiological and cognitive states related to thinking, mood and emotion, and behavior including negative and positive mental health states. Sharma et al. [21] show that mental health is a positive expression, which is the absence of anxiety, social dysfunction and the presence of condition. Based on these definitions, scholars have developed a variety of measurement instruments that include both positive and negative terms in order to describe mental health more accurately [22]. Although definitions and measurements differ among scholars, it is widely accepted that positive affective states are often described as ‘good’ mental health, while a state of emotional suffering such as depression and anxiety is often used to refer to ‘poor’ mental health [8,23].

2.2. Employee Mental Health and Job Performance

The relationships between mental health and job performance have received increased attention in the organizational literature. We propose that employee mental health is positively correlated with job performance. This view is consistent with the happy–productive worker hypothesis that suggests that mental health is positively related to job performance [24,25].

Specifically, mentally healthy employees with positive affective states can improve cognitive flexibility and find more solutions to problems in work tasks [26]. Thus, employees with good mental health perform better on work tasks than those with poor mental health. Moreover, positive affective states are associated with individuals building good interpersonal relationships [27], which enable them to receive help from their leaders and colleagues at work. Studies also showed that good social relationships are an important source of job-related information and knowledge [28]. Finally, many studies also support this hypothesis. For example, in a meta-analytic study from 111 independent samples obtained from a search of the literature, Ford et al. [13] indicated that psychological health was a moderate-to-strong correlate of work performance. Similarly, Zacher, Jimmieson and Winter [25] showed that employees’ mental health had a positive effect on work performance in the sample of 165 employees providing in-home eldercare, as well as one colleague and one family member of each employee. At the same time, several meta-analytical findings indicate that poor mental health such as anxiety, depressive symptoms and job stress has a negative impact on job performance [16]. Hence, we expect:
Hypothesis 1. Employee mental health is positively related to job performance.

Conclusion:

Based on existing research gaps, this study explores the impact of employee mental health on job performance. Considering that few studies in the literature focus on the context of China, an emerging economy, this study uses samples in China and finds that employee mental health plays an important role in improving job performance. Chinese organizations should try to maintain employee mental health to achieve high job performance. Furthermore, we discuss the employee mental health–job performance relationship. The paths of how employee mental health influence job performance are revealed in this study. The results show that work engagement and innovative behaviors play positive mediating roles in the relationship between employee mental health and job performance. These findings reveal the relationship between employee mental health and job performance and further enrich the literature on employee behaviors. Furthermore, this study extends the research of employees’ characteristics and their influences on job performance.