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Work Engagement and Job Crafting

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The Positive Side of Occupational Health Psychology

Abstract

In order for employees to feel good, have good health and be productive, a constructive psychosocial working environment is important. (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014; Christensen, 2008; Christensen, Aronsson, Clausen, Hakanen, & Vivoll Straume, 2012). Good leadership, a well-designed job, and working conditions that promotes work engagement and good performance, is important in achieving this. Organizations usually initiate top-down governed interventions to increase motivation, to decrease sickness absenteeism, and to increase performance. However, they do not always get the expected results (Aust, Rugulies, Finken, & Jensen, 2010). Many organizations also find that the bottom-up-processes of engagement and performance, driven by the employees themselves, combined with equivalent processes driven by the management, to be more useful. One kind of bottom-up processes is job crafting, where the employees themselves form the job in such a way that it is perceived as more engaging. Leadership can stimulate job crafting by promoting the right work conditions for their employees. Job crafting can be understood as a type of proactive behavior where the employees themselves takes the initiative to change the level of demands and resources to make their job more meaningful, engaging, and satisfying. In this chapter, we will first explain what work engagement is, as well as the theoretical background. Second, we will examine the concept of job crafting. Finally, we will give some tips on how one can work with job crafting in practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

    Marit Christensen

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  1. Marit Christensen
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Correspondence to Marit Christensen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

    Marit Christensen

  2. Department of Psychology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

    Per Øystein Saksvik

  3. Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Maria Karanika-Murray

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Christensen, M. (2017). Work Engagement and Job Crafting. In: Christensen, M., Saksvik, P., Karanika-Murray, M. (eds) The Positive Side of Occupational Health Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66781-2_7

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