What is job crafting?
Job crafting enables employees to change aspects of their job so that it is more interesting and meaningful, and therefore more engaging and enjoyable to them.
It may also involve adapting their role so that it better suits their strengths so they can perform better.
There are three ways in which employees can job craft:
- Task crafting: Changing their duties to better suit their individual skills and needs.
- Relational crafting: Altering who they work with and how they work with them.
- Cognitive crafting: Tweaking their mindset about the tasks they complete.
It is important to note that job crafting is different from job designing. Job designing is undertaken by a business leader to create a new position and outline tasks and responsibilities that meet business goals while also providing rewarding opportunities for the employee.
Job crafting allows the employee to make tweaks to a role once it is designed to suit their own needs.
It is also important to remember job crafting is individual. What may work for one employee may not work for the next, or for a colleague performing the same role.
Sometimes the changes made can be applied to other roles but often it will only affect the individual employee.
What is task crafting?
Many employers may already enable their employees to job craft without even realising it.
For example, employees are assigned a set of tasks to achieve in a day but are provided with the autonomy to choose when to do them. One employee may decide they are more focused after lunch to write a report, while another may prefer to do it first thing after their morning coffee.
An employee may feel that giving extra time to one task at the expense of another is more beneficial for the business, such as spending more time on the task of brainstorming a range of ideas and less time on the task of making their presentation of these ideas look visually appealing.
Employees may also be able to step outside of their job description and conduct other tasks if they feel they have the time to do so and it adds value to the business. For example, this may be mentoring junior employees or implementing a new communication process for the team.
In some instances, employees may remove or reduce tasks from their role, perhaps delegating them to others or completing them less frequently. However, they should not remove tasks or delegate them without first seeking permission from their manager to do so.
What is relational crafting?
Relational crafting involves how employees communicate and interact with others, as well as who they work with.
For example, employees may brainstorm ideas with those in other departments to get their unique insights on a project or choose to sit with colleagues in other departments when hot desking to interact with new people.
This type of job crafting may include taking the time to get to know colleagues better socially, such as learning more about their hobbies or going out to lunch together, in order to form stronger interpersonal relationships.
Relational crafting also can involve taking the time to better understand or consider the view of colleagues and clients with whom they may have a poor relationship, such as a manager who develops a short temper or a client who complains.
This can be as simple as considering if they are under unusual pressure in their role, or assuming they have had a bad night’s sleep.
What is cognitive crafting?
This kind of job crafting may not change anything about the role itself but can make all the difference to an employee’s attitude.
For example, a chef’s key responsibility may be to prepare food but they instead consider that they are fuelling and nourishing their customers.
Or, an employee may dread attending a certain weekly meeting as they feel it is a waste of their time but changes their mindset to see the meeting as a good way to network with other colleagues.
In cognitive crafting, a co-worker may not agree with the employee’s mindset but that does not matter.
By individualising and reframing their point of view, employees can find their role more meaningful.
Why is job crafting beneficial?
When employers empower their employees to craft their own jobs, they showcase trust in their workers and their abilities. Trust empowers employees to continue to do their job correctly and confirms that they are performing well.
Performance also can increase when employees enjoy their work, which comes when they are able to style their work day and complete their tasks the way they want to.
It all leads to employees who want to stay with a company, rather than leaving to find a more enjoyable job.
This leads to less turnover for employers and reduces the difficulty they may have in finding suitable replacements, never mind the cost associated with regular recruitment.
Job crafting can have benefits for the bottom line of the business, too.For example, an employee who job crafts may introduce a more productive way of working that previously had not been considered.
Relational crafting may increase innovation within the company, leading to new products and services being developed.
Cognitive crafting can lead to better quality products and services that lead to an increase in the number of customers.
How to implement job crafting in the workplace
Some job crafting may occur organically but it is important for managers to have open and regular conversations with employees to ensure there are no misunderstandings.
Leaders and managers may want to introduce job crafting formally by announcing at a team meeting that they are open to new ways of working and to employees who feel able to take initiatives and make their own changes, if, that by doing so, it brings value to the business’ objectives.
Or, leaders and managers may choose to meet with each employee to discuss their role and ask them about any changes they feel can be made.
Informal measures can also facilitate job crafting, such as praising an employee in passing for doing a job well in a different way, or for going above and beyond their job description.
Having an open relationship with employees and a workplace culture in which they are encouraged to bring forward new ideas also helps job crafting, by making employees feel comfortable about coming forward with new suggestions.
It can be a good idea to put any task-crafting changes in writing, such as adapting the job description to include or remove a task, to ensure that other workers and future managers are aware of the changes made to the position.
If a manager feels that an employee is overstepping boundaries and their performance is suffering or they are being a burden to others in the organisation by making their own changes, they should raise this immediately with an employee in writing or verbally.
This will ensure they understand that the changes are not acceptable and they should maintain the status quo.
The exception may be with cognitive job crafting – a manager may not need to know what an employee is thinking when they are completing a task, as long as they are performing it effectively and efficiently.
Job crafting may be a slow initiative to implement company-wide but it has lasting rewards, for employers as well as employees.It may mean that managers need to release some of their control over their employees’ daily activities but by being open-minded, it can be an enlightening process for all.
