**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 [4–6]. 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 [6,9–12]. 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 [14–17].

Although the relationship between mental health and job performance has been well-documented, there still remain some insufficiencies in the previous research. As a

**Citation:** Lu, X.; Yu, H.; Shan, B. Relationship between Employee Mental Health and Job Performance: Mediation Role of Innovative Behavior and Work Engagement. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2022**, *19*, 6599. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ijerph19116599

Academic Editor: Delfina G. Ramos

Received: 27 April 2022 Accepted: 25 May 2022 Published: 28 May 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

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.

With the goal of addressing this gap of the unclear path of employee mental health-job performance in the literature, we consider the mediating role of employee innovation behavior and work engagement on this relationship. It additionally aims to identify the antecedents of job performance. Because research on the employee mental health–job performance relationship in emerging economies is lacking, we also aim to analyze the role of employee mental health in job performance in China. To achieve the goals adopted in the study, we examine the employee mental health–job performance relationship, innovation behavior, the work engagement–job performance relationship, and the mediating role of innovation behavior and work engagement in the mental health–job performance relationship using data from Chinese firms. Our results show that employee mental health is positively associated with job performance, and that these effects are mediated by employee innovative behavior and work engagement.

The present paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, complementing previous research investigating the role of employee mental health in job performance in developed economies, we examine employee mental health's impact on job performance in China. Second, we contribute to the research on job performance by analyzing the role of innovative behavior and work engagement in job performance. Although prior research has provided insightful understanding of the drivers of job performance, knowledge on job performance could benefit from identifying further drivers that explain this important concept. Third, we explored the pathways of employee mental health affecting job performance ignored by extant research, thus extending the relationship between employee mental health and job performance.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. Firstly, the literature on employee mental health is reviewed, and the corresponding theoretical hypotheses are put forward. Second, this study proposes the methods and results. Then, we conclude by discussing our results and their implications for theory and practice and suggesting future research directions. Finally, we draw a conclusion of this study.
