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Craft it if you cannot avoid it: job crafting alleviates the detrimental effects of illegitimate tasks on employee health

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Abstract

Illegitimate tasks are destructive and unavoidable in the workplace. Although previous research has demonstrated the negative impact of illegitimate tasks on employee health, we know little about the remedies that could alleviate such an adverse effect, particularly from the perspective of employees’ action. Drawing on the job demands-resources model, we propose that employees’ job crafting can alleviate the relationship between illegitimate tasks and their psychological and physical health problems. We tested our hypotheses using a sample of 213 community social workers in China, from whom we collected data at three time periods. The results showed that illegitimate tasks could lead to both psychological and physical health problems through the mediating role of perceived work overload. Job crafting could moderate the relationship between illegitimate tasks and perceived work overload, which means community social workers with a higher level of job crafting perceive lighter work overload when faced with illegitimate tasks, and thus, they experience less psychological exhaustion and somatic symptoms. Overall, our study suggests that employees can proactively craft their tasks to make themselves less susceptible to illegitimate tasks. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 71772193; 72172170].

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  1. Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Fubin Jiang & Zhen Wang

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  1. Fubin Jiang
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Correspondence to Zhen Wang.

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Jiang, F., Wang, Z. Craft it if you cannot avoid it: job crafting alleviates the detrimental effects of illegitimate tasks on employee health. Curr Psychol 43, 7924–7935 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04958-7

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