There is a growing body of evidence, which makes the link between job design and employee engagement. In one study (Christian et al, 2011), found certain aspects of a job, such as task variety, autonomy, significance and feedback, are positively related to engagement in a wide range of research papers. One of the themes arising in much of the research, is autonomy.
This isn’t surprising given that our own, soon to be published, research also found autonomy to be a key feature of employee’s best experiences at work. In research with call centre employees, Bond (2010), discovered that even a small increase in autonomy resulted in a significant increase in motivation, alongside a decrease in absenteeism and mental distress. In addition, Wrzniewski and Dutton (2001) in their research, looking at hospital cleaning staff, found that those given more autonomy to interact with patients, visitors and others, were more satisfied than their counterparts, and felt they were playing a more important role.
Autonomy, by definition, provides employees with the freedom to determine their own actions and behaviours and in doing this, employees will experience a high degree of involvement in their day-to-day activities. Equally, if we provide employees with the opportunity to get involved with aspects of their job, or projects, or the organisation, this involvement then facilitates autonomy.
The concept of job-crafting takes this idea a stage further. Job-crafting enables employees themselves to make changes to their own job design. Wrzesniewski defines job crafting as the process of employees redefining and re-imagining their job designs in personally meaningful ways. Wrzesniewski argues that experience of meaning at work is malleable; that through job re-crafting individuals can change the way they:
- approach the tasks in their work
- increase or decrease the number and kinds of tasks they do as part of their job
- change the number of relationships they have with others they encounter at work
She shares a great example of an office cleaner re-crafting her job, by caring for the plants for people who are away, or do not have green thumbs. By involving employees in re-crafting their roles, it enables them to take the initiative in small ways: people perform their roles in ways that are meaningful to them, giving them increased sense of purpose and autonomy. By enabling employees to get involved with crafting their role, they can align it with their personal values, strengths and interests, and there is a greater chance of finding meaning at work
We recently explored the concept of job-crafting with Rob Baker on our Reset Show. Rob is a world leading expert in job-crafting and published author. He shared with us the 5 main ways that people tend to job craft:
- task crafting – tangibly changing aspects of how we undertake our work, including designing, adding or removing tasks
- relationship crafting – shaping how we relate and engage with others, including building and adapting our relationship with co-workers
- purpose crafting – reframing how we think about our work in general, including the value and significance it brings to us personally and others
- skill crafting – developing, refining and focusing on new skills
- wellbeing crafting – boosting our physical and mental health through the work we do
Rob shared some great examples of how job-crafting can positively impact both employees and organisations. If you’d like to know more you can check out Rob’s Job Crafting Guide here or buy a copy of his book, which we highly recommend!
And of course you can catch up on the Reset Show with Rob on our YouTube channel here.
We’d love to know your thoughts on job-crafting, is it something we will see more of, or are companies terrified by the idea? Let us know what you think.
