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High Job Demands, Still Engaged and Not Burned Out? The Role of Job Crafting

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Abstract

Purpose

Traditionally, employee well-being has been considered as resulting from decent working conditions arranged by the organization. Much less is known about whether employees themselves can make self-initiated changes to their work, i.e., craft their jobs, in order to stay well, even in highly demanding work situations. The aim of this study was to use the job demands-resources (JD-R model) to investigate whether job crafting buffers the negative impacts of four types of job demands (workload, emotional dissonance, work contents, and physical demands) on burnout and work engagement.

Method

A questionnaire study was designed to examine the buffering role of job crafting among 470 Finnish dentists.

Results

All in all, 11 out of 16 possible interaction effects of job demands and job crafting on employee well-being were significant. Job crafting particularly buffered the negative effects of job demands on burnout (7/8 significant interactions) and to a somewhat lesser extent also on work engagement (4/8 significant interactions). Applying job crafting techniques appeared to be particularly effective in mitigating the negative effects of quantitative workload (4/4 significant interactions).

Conclusion

By demonstrating that job crafting can also buffer the negative impacts of high job demands on employee well-being, this study contributed to the JD-R model as it suggests that job crafting may even be possible under high work demands, and not only in resourceful jobs, as most previous studies have indicated. In addition to the top-down initiatives for improving employee well-being, bottom-up approaches such as job crafting may also be efficient in preventing burnout and enhancing work engagement.

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Notes

  1. This sample has been previously used in one study [35] which had different research questions and only one variable, i.e., exhaustion in common.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Pertti Mutanen for his contribution to the preliminary phases of data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Modern Work and Leadership, Töölöntullinkatu 8, FI-00250, Helsinki, Finland

    Jari J. Hakanen & Piia Seppälä

  2. Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Jari J. Hakanen

  3. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Maria C. W. Peeters

Authors
  1. Jari J. Hakanen
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  2. Piia Seppälä
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  3. Maria C. W. Peeters
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Correspondence to Jari J. Hakanen.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Hakanen, J.J., Seppälä, P. & Peeters, M.C.W. High Job Demands, Still Engaged and Not Burned Out? The Role of Job Crafting. Int.J. Behav. Med. 24, 619–627 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-017-9638-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-017-9638-3

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