Unleashing Career Potential through Job Crafting
Research Insights on Burnout and Job Happiness
Research by the Mayo Clinic suggests that when doctors and nurses spend at least 20 percent of their time at work doing activities they love, they are far less likely to experience burnout. Similarly, ADP Research found that engaging in daily activities you love makes you more resilient at work.
Breaking Free from Career Traps
Many workers feel trapped in their careers, thinking some jobs are just inherently tough. While it’s true that every job has its challenges, every job also offers the opportunity for job crafting, enabling you to fill your days with activities you love. Who wouldn’t want that?
Can You Really Customize Your Job?
Is it really possible to craft your job to include more of what you love while still fulfilling your core responsibilities? Absolutely, yes.
What is Job Crafting?
Job crafting, a concept from positive psychology, empowers individuals to enhance their work life by tailoring their jobs to align with their strengths, values, and passions.
Job crafting isn’t about abandoning your work responsibilities. It’s about finding the best way to meet job expectations while exercising your strengths and passions. A staggering 73 percent of workers report having enough flexibility to do more work they love but don't use that flexibility.
Redefining Your Job
Job crafting involves redefining your job to incorporate your motives, strengths, and passions. This approach improves job satisfaction, performance, and meaning.
Traditional fixed job descriptions are becoming outdated. The traditional model prescribes how workers should spend their time, making many feel restricted. Job crafting allows employees to take the initiative to meet job expectations in a way that aligns with their unique strengths and preferences.
How to Job Craft
You can craft your job in several ways:
Task Crafting: Change the number or type of duties to align with your strengths and interests. This includes adding or removing tasks, spending more or less time on certain tasks, or redesigning tasks.
Relationship Crafting: Alter how, when, or with whom you interact at work. Build, reframe, and adapt relationships to foster meaningfulness.
Purpose Crafting: Change your perception of work to find more meaning in your daily tasks.
Well-being Crafting: Modify your role to improve your sense of well-being.
How do you begin? Start with 10-15 tasks on your plate. Decide whether those tasks are things you love or things you loathe (or they may feel neutral). Consider how you can do more of the work you love while minimizing the work you loathe.
How could you change these activities to give you, on balance, more things you love in your days?
Real-World Benefits
I’ve seen firsthand how my clients benefit from job crafting. Most of us already do some form of job crafting to focus more on what we love. While many of us dream about the possibility of a dream job, it’s true there is a lot that can be done with the career we have. Indeed, job crafting can make difference between a terrible week at work and one that leaves us realizing there still is a lot that fills us up at work. It’s all a matter of taking that first step.