The Future of Leadership/Job Crafting

Job Crafting
Although traditional job-design is top-down, job crafting is initiated by proactive employees at an organization. Employees participating in job crafting take the initiative to shape their jobs to better suit their strengths, motives, and passions. These job crafting behaviors can lead to greater employee engagement. Leaders can take advantage of the benefits of job crafting by understanding job crafting and enabling their employees to reframe their roles in the organization. This chapter will define job crafting and effects of employees crafting their jobs and then offer some practical advice for leaders on this subject.

What is Job Crafting?
Job crafting is a tool employees can use to make their job a better fit for their personal needs, interests, and skills by changing the scope of their job tasks and relationships. Job crafting can be especially relevant when employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, and for economic or other reasons, they are unable to move into a different role or company. Employees may be motivated to craft their jobs in order to feel a sense of control over some aspects of their job, even if it’s in small ways. Crafting their job also gives employees an opportunity to create and support a positive self image of themselves and what they do. Additionally, job crafting may be motivated by the desire of an employee for their work to allow them to meaningfully connect with and impact others. Whatever the specific motivation, employees are typically driven to craft their jobs based on work identity needs that are not being met by the way their job is currently designed.

In research, there are two dominant perspectives of job crafting.

Task, Relational, & Cognitive
The first common perspective defines job crafting as “the physical and cognitive changes individuals make in the task or relational boundaries of their work”. Through crafting their jobs, employees are able to change the identity and meaning of their work. This first perspective breaks job crafting into three different types: task, relational, and cognitive. Crafting a job through task crafting involves changing the number, scope, or type of tasks that one does at work. Relational crafting requires changing the quantity or quality or interactions with others at work. Cognitive crafting involves reframing the way one thinks about the job they do.

Job Demands-Resources
The second dominant perspective on job crafting defines job crafting as “a specific form of proactive behavior in which the employee initiates changes in the level of job demands and job resources”. Job demands are the features of a job that require a sustained physical, emotional, or mental effort from the employee, while job resources are the features of a job that reduce job demands, are useful in achieving work goals, and/or help an employee achieve personal growth. This second perspective on job crafting describes methods of job crafting in three dimensions: increasing the level of job resources, increasing the level of job demands, and/or decreasing the level of job demands.

The Effects of Job Crafting
Effective job crafting has various benefits, both for the employee and for the organization. One notable benefit is the increased connection throughout the workplace. Humans are naturally very social. Oftentimes, employees will change their positions to allow them to collaborate with their coworkers more often. The relationship between coworkers improves, and so does the relationship between employees and the company itself. It has been shown that in companies that employees are allowed to have a say in their job duties are more likely to remain loyal to their current organization rather than finding a new job.

The benefits of job crafting could be especially relevant now, considering that in 2022, Gallup’s employee engagement survey found that only 32% of full-time and part-time employees are engaged at their job, on the decline since 2020. Job crafting has been shown to increase employee engagement, especially when the job crafting behaviors involve things like taking on new challenges and skill development. Alternatively, if an employee is crafting their job on a daily basis to reduce the level of job demands, it is shown to decrease job engagement. This means that whether the effects of job crafting are positive or negative depends on what employees are doing to craft their jobs.

Practical Advice for Leaders
Leaders in the workplace could benefit greatly from encouraging effective job crafting among their employees. People enjoy autonomy. When approaching something like job crafting in the workplace, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, job crafting is continuous. It is something that has to be kept up on and will evolve constantly. Second, it is important to ensure that the job crafting aligns with the goals and ideals of both the employee and the organization. Job crafting that does not directly align with the ideals and help work towards the goals of an organization is counterproductive. Job crafting is a powerful tool when used correctly. It is important for employers to be intentional as they go about enabling it in the workplace.

Conclusion
There is a variety of useful research that has been done on what job crafting is and how it can benefit employees and their organizations. At a time when employee engagement is on the decline, job crafting could be very beneficial to employees who don’t feel a strong fit with their role and/or organization but aren’t in a position to leave. Job crafting is something that leaders should encourage when possible, due to the benefits to the organization, including increased employee-organization loyalty and improved collaboration between employees.