A case study of an innovative and evidenced-based approach to bringing job crafting to life across an organisation (n=450).
The project, entitled “Bee who you want to be” was awarded consultancy project of the year by the CIPD in 2020 (Europe’s largest professional body for HR professionals). The organisation wanted to find ways to sustainably increase engagement, wellbeing and retention levels. Job crafting was identified as an evidence-based approach to do this.
Job crafting enables people to bring their whole and best selves to work by making personal changes and improvements to their jobs [1,2]. It is associated with positive outcomes including thriving, growth and performance [3].
The project had three distinct themes and the details and outcomes from each phase will be presented. Phase 1 involved testing job crafting as a concept with 3 different groups across the organisation who were characterised as being potential job crafting sceptics, supporters and unknowns. Phase 2 involved evaluating the impact and feedback from pilot groups.
Phase 3 involved embedding job crafting conversations across the organisation, through quarterly discussions between team leaders and their colleagues. Each quarter a different job crafting theme was focused on and discussed such as task crafting, relationship crafting, wellbeing crafting, purpose crafting and skill crafting. At the end of each conversation employees were encouraged to make a small positive and personal experimental change to their job. Conversation templates to support these discussions were developed and will be shared.
Key outcomes of the project included: 100% of pilot participants recommending job crafting to others; 88% of employees actively applying job crafting; increased levels of retention (7%), engagement (13%) and reported wellbeing (11%); 4,900 days reduction of sickness absence; £396,000 turnover savings.
The project had active involvement of job crafting researchers and this evidence-informed and evidence-informing approach will be discussed.