Job Crafting Case Study

Held back?

Do you ever feel like your job is holding you back from reaching your full potential?

Do you crave more autonomy and creativity in your work?

You are not alone. Over 70% of employees desire some level of job crafting – the process of redefining and customising one’s work tasks, relationships, and responsibilities to better align with their personal values and goals (Deloitte).

Your job description does not adequately describe all the the work that you do. What can you do about this?

Job Crafting

Job Crafting evolved from positive organisational theory and psychology. It was introduced by Wrzesniewski & Dutton to describe the self-initiated approach by a worker to change their job, Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001), Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201.

The basic Job Crafting definition relating to employees working in an organisation is defined as:

"an employee-initiated approach which enables employees to shape their own work environment such that it fits their individual needs by adjusting the prevailing job demands and resources”

(Tims & Bakker, 2010).

For practical application Job Crafting has been divided into 3 sub-categories:

• Task crafting – changing the mix of activities in your role by increasing or decreasing the scope of tasks or by changing the way you perform the tasks

• Relational crafting – changing the extent or way your interact with other people in your workplace and profession

• Cognitive crafting – changing the way you think about the purpose and meaning of your tasks, workplace relationships or your work as a whole.

In the Mellow Estates Scenario, Georgia's task involved all 3 sub-categories, namely:

Task crafting (meet new client)

Relational crafting (build relationship with client)

Cognitive crafting (reframe her role to include building a key account relationship).

The Scenario involves a working lawyer. Job Crafting and its mature sibling, Role Sculpting, provide an important means to focus and reflect upon, your self-initiated work tasks. And therefore to analyse how these initiatives did, or did work well.

Recently a more nuanced understanding of Job Crafting has evolved. It has now been classified into two higher order constructs namely approach crafting, which refers to self-directed actions to gain positive work aspects; and avoidance crafting, which refers to self-directed actions to avoid negative work aspects.

In our Scenario Georgia demonstrates "approach crafting" because she has created more work for herself by her own initiative. If Jo takes over the Role then this remains as Job Crafting and there will be no significant implications for Georgia's workload (Job Crafting 1).

If Georgia starts to work with Paul then there may be the risk of work overload for her. Additionally there will also be consideration, by the formal leadership group, as to whether having Georgia perform this additional role, is in the overall interests of the Firm (Role Crafting 2).

Job Crafting Scenario [Georgia and Mellow Estates]

S      Georgia, a senior associate in a commercial law firm, Bay Eagles, joined a local business network group. There she met Milly, the only child of a local Family winery that is expanding, Mellow Estates. Milly is the Operations Manager and has come in to see Georgia to ask her to take on the Winery as a new business client.

T  Georgia has brought a new client into the firm.  She works in Corporate Advice however the new work will extend into Wills and Estates, Conveyancing and Intellectual Property. Georgia wants to retain the key account management role within the Firm.

A   Georgia decides to book a meeting with her manager, Jo, the Head of Corporate Advice to request that she be given the opportunity to retain Milly and Mellow Estates as her client and that she arranges all referrals to other solicitors within the Firm and receive an additional salary for bringing in the new work.  

R 

Job Crafting 1:  Georgia and Jo meet.  A compromise is agreed whereby Jo will take over the key account management role (the Role) but keep Georgia up to date.  A payment of $5000 is made to Georgia. This is a standard agreement within the Firm.

Role Sculpting 2:  Georgia and Jo meet.  Jo agrees to advocate at the Partners next meeting that Georgia retain the Role and that the Managing Partner, Paul, mentors her through the first year (as a Professional Development skills building opportunity) to ensure that all the client’s legal needs are met and leveraged. This arrangement meets the Firm's objective to retain its high performing senior associates and gives Paul direct access to Georgia's interpersonal and technical work skills. Georgia also receives the $5000 payment.

Questions Arising from the Scenario

The Scenario shows how working professionals are motivated to adapt to changes in their work situation and to alter aspects of their work environment.

Have you already done this in one or more of your roles?

Did it go smoothly for you?

Have you ever over extended yourself by taking charge of improving an existing work task yet, instead of organisational support, you encountered significant resistance from colleagues or management?

Benefits and Drawbacks for Georgia and the Firm

Georgia can develop her Professional Development Business Building skills whilst being mentored by the Senior Partner, Paul, within the Firm. For the Firm there is the new business activity brought in by Georgia and the opportunity to provide an extension opportunity to a valued employee.

Benefits

Therefore in addition to a person enjoying more meaningful work there are other key benefits:

1. Enhanced organisational performance

2. Greater engagement and better retention prospects

3. Adding more challenge promotes mastery

4. May help to achieve ideal career status

5. Makes job crafter happier.

Drawbacks

Because organisations are systems, changing the way we do work, can impact, not only the individual but also the organisation. Drawbacks can include:

1. Misaligned goals between the individual and their workplace

2. Unequal access to crafting and fairness perception

3. Individuals taking on too much

4. Some people may be left open to exploitation.

Overlapping Concepts: Job Design, Role Definition and Job Crafting

There are similarities in the concepts of Job Design, Role Definition and Job Crafting in that all involve the redesign and description of work.

Job Design involves the systematic organisation of work-related processes, functions, and tasks, Garg & Rastogi (2006). Importantly it is undertaken by the organisation (employer).

Whereas Job Crafting is self-initiated and actioned by the individual worker. An extension of Job Design is Role Definition. Here the worker is an active participant in defining and documenting what it is they do. This is often used in process mapping work.

Both task crafting (part of job crafting) and job design can involve task revision, where responsibilities are added to or dropped in order to change the nature of a role. They also both stem from the premise that job dimensions can impact our experienced meaningfulness, growth, intrinsic motivation, and job satisfaction (Hackman & Oldham, 1976; 1980).

Even job sharing can be seen as a type of relationship crafting in some respects. However in most cases, job design is seen as a ‘top-down’ organisational approach in which the worker is mostly passive (Makul et al., 2013; Miller, 2015).

Checking in

It is possible that, once we gain insights about our positive and negative experiences in self-initiating changes at work, troubling issues, about our current job or career progression, might arise.

Although Core EQ does not offer therapy or counselling we follow the guidelines of the Equine Experiential Education Association, (E3A) and can assist you to seek out therapy interventions.

You can use the frameworks of Job Crafting, Role Sculpting and Leaderwork to achieve greater clarity about your work and your options.

The Equine (EQ) Link

Equine Experiential Education programs can significantly assist people to draw on their unique strengths and attributes and tap into their job crafting and leaderwork capabilities. Equine assisted Team building and Leadership exercises can enhance this work.

Deborah Hann

February 2024