Job crafting is relatively a new term in the field of human resource management. Organizations that are concerned about employee wellness and increased employee retention rate are also concerned about job crafting. According to many human resource experts, this is an amazingly effective thing when it comes to retaining the top talents of an organization. You know that job crafting has been in practice for a decade at least yet many organizations are there which not getting proper ways in order to enable proper job crafting for their employees.
The concept is truly effective for organizations that are facing difficulty when it comes to employee retention. Job crafting takes place when an employee gets the opportunity to make changes to his/her job role in order to satisfy their personal interests and skills. The main aim of the job crafting regime is to let employees explore the areas that are of interest to them and let them grow in their professional fields. You know that if employees truly get benefited via their jobs, they become happier and more engaged. And an engaged employee offers more productivity.
A deep understanding of job crafting
The concept of job crafting is in practice for at least 10 years. It is not that it is going to change the entire job role of an employee. But it is going to bring some changes into the job roles so that an employee can easily redesign his/her job roles so that they can match their duties better with their personalities, motivations, and skills. In this way, they can easily bring job satisfaction and it is the most driving factor in order to boost the employee retention rate of an organization. It is like just by simply changing the way your employees perceive and see their jobs, their job becomes much more meaningful and satisfactory to them.
When it comes to successfully conduct job crafting for all your employees, a lot of people get confused between job design and job crafting. Today, we are going to drag an end to the confusion. Without any doubt, both job design and job crafting aim to improve the job and ensure the benefit of both employee and employer. The job design is fully controlled by either employers or employees. But when it comes to job crafting the scenario is a bit different. Here, we can notice a smooth collaboration of both employees and employers. It is about leaving some spaces open for employees so that they can easily shape their roles and make the job truly satisfactory to them.
Some examples are going to make the concept of job crafting easy for your understanding. We are also attaching an image so that you can better grab the concept.
When it comes to how organizations tend to perform job crafting, we find 5 common ways. What are those, let’s explore below-
Changes to tasks and activities- in order to bring some changes to the tasks and activities, you may need to spend some time during the start of the day. The process is pretty simple. At the start of the day, you just have to set the goals that you want to achieve by the end of the day. Instead of getting puzzled by the tasks assigned for you for a week or more, you should only concentrate on the task that you should perform on that day. In this way, you will be able to manage a great level of productivity without taking much stress. Answering too many people during the start of the day, firefighting, and losing control over your day is not going to work. Here, you need to be straightforward and keep the entire thing easy. You should start your day freshly. You can plan your day and start performing accordingly.
The HR professionals should make all employees understand how they should start their day according to their job roles. Flexibility is required when it comes to doing job crafting successfully.
Let employees develop some skills- employers should give employees the flexibility and scopes in order to make employees develop some skills related to their job roles. All employees should get the chance to develop some required skills. Both employers and employees should always think about the future scenario. Along with performing their daily jobs, it is also important to have some new skills so that they can easily be promoted as domain senior in the near future and easily handle the new responsibilities. So, all employers should ensure that each of their employees is getting the required opportunities to grow their skills in order to easily perform upcoming tasks.
Purpose crafting- this is another important thing when it comes to job crafting. While enabling job crafting, both employees and employers should think about the value and purpose of the job. Along with this, both should define early the extent that they can meet in order to satisfy the requirements of a job. It is all about showing the extent that you can reach in order to achieve something of your interest.
Relationship crafting- Relationship crafting is all about how one interacts with others in order to perform his/her job. It can be colleagues, customers, or anyone related to the job. In order to ensure success, sometimes reframing relationships is important. If you find out that the existing relationship management rule or framework is not working, you should reframe it as soon as possible. You can reframe some relationships, you can build some new relationships, and you can even diminish some relationships in order to achieve the goals.
Wellbeing crafting- all employers, human resource management professionals, and employees should explore as well as define how each employee can make his/her job healthier for him/her from a physical and mental perspective. We all know that happy and satisfied employees are more productive and dedicated to the organization.
We have seen that when employees try to do job crafting, they think that they are going to face many unintended consequences. Each employee can easily do job crafting and related experiments in order to make their performance and productivity better. Many employees make their job better in many unknown and unexpected ways while conducting job crafting. Now we can say that job crafting is all about offering flexibility and opportunities to employees so that they can easily tap into unknown and unseen ideas and explore them properly.
How job crafting can be done, now we have an understanding of that. But in order to understand the importance of job crafting, we should explore the job crafting benefits in this move. We should divide the job crafting benefits into two segments: one is for employees and another one is for employers.
Benefits of job crafting for employers
Increased employee engagement: Job crafting will enable an opportunity for employers to know employees who have the ability to become more involved with their roles in the organization. Employees who get more involved with their roles, they also become more engaged with the organization. And you know that when employees become truly engaged, retaining them becomes an organization. When employees will feel that they are respected and trusted by employers, they will always go the miles extra in order to achieve organizational goals properly. Proper job crafting will result in an emotional commitment boost of employees in an organization.
Increased employee productivity- It is no more a secret that if an employee is enjoying his/her role, he/she will be automatically more productive. When an employer lets his/her employees do job crafting, the employer is going to enjoy a high level of productivity without putting in much effort. Employees who get opportunities to do job crafting will also experience both personal and professional growth. And you know that these things are truly effective in increasing the overall productivity level of an organization.
Increased employee loyalty- when it comes to boosting the employee retention rate, there is no better way than boosting the employee loyalty level of an organization. You may know that while getting a new opportunity, a loyal employee will always think about your organization instead of running to the opportunity. If you do job crafting, you will actually bring some changes in the job role of your employees. Actually, performing the same type of tasks on a regular basis for a long time can make your employees feel bored. In such a situation, you should do job crafting and enable some changes. In this way, your employees will get vigor back to perform at your place.
Less stress in employees- the entire world is concerned about how to reduce the stress level in employees so that they can live better and perform better. Each employer is in search of different as well as effective ways when it comes to reducing the stress level of their employees. You may know that workplace stress is a major issue and employers are leaving no stone unturned in order to keep their employees truly stress-free. When it comes to making the employees stress-free and boosting their productivity, job crafting can be an amazing solution. Workplace stress does not only reduce the performance capacity of an employee but also affects the health of an employee. In order to avoid all these risks, smart employers are doing a simple thing and that is job crafting of their employees.
Benefits of job crafting for employees
True happiness- we have seen that employees who engage in job crafting, become happier than employees who do not take part in job crafting. Having a satisfying work-life balance and increased personal satisfaction are the best sources of happiness for a working adult. Achieving this happiness is not a tough thing today, just by job crafting an employee can reach this happiness. Apart from this, employees who take part in job crafting also feel trusted, respected, and appreciated by their employers. And we know that happy employees are more engaged as well as productive.
Improved well-being- job crafting has the power to bring positivity and meaning to any job role. Employees who can take part in job crafting feel satisfied as well as happier. When an employee is satisfied as well as happy, automatically work-related stress gets reduced. The employee becomes more productive, engaged, and feels secure to perform at that organization.
Stronger connections- Job crafting actually helps in building a more engaged workforce. Job crafting lets employees tweak their roles and inspire more collaboration. In this way, employees collaborate more with various departments and create more opportunities for teamwork and social connection. Such collaboration, as well as connection, is important when it comes to developing a happy and healthy workplace.
How can HRs help in job crafting?
You may know that many employees are clueless about proper job crafting or they may not know more about the importance of job crafting. In such a situation, HRs should help them and create strong opportunities for job crafting. If employees are not aware of job crafting, HRs should train them and make them understand the benefits of it. HRs can provide supporting learning materials in order to make learning faster. HRs can also make it a part of their training and onboarding regime.
HRs can also do conversations on this topic, personalize conversations with employees, and do check-ins and employee review discussions. These are effective ways to enable job crafting. Many organizations also go for team fracking. In this way, they can save a lot of time. But this technique may not be similarly effective on each employee of the organization.
In order to conduct job crafting-related communication and to offer the required flexibility, we cannot deny the need of enabling a human resource management software system. When it comes to hrms system, you can go for HRMWARE. This is an advanced cloud-based solution with all the best features required for enabling job crafting in your organization. This is also free for organizations that are running with up to 10 employees.