Job Crafting: How Redesigning Roles Enables Better Workplace Mental Health
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
How your job is designed plays a big role in your experience of work. When jobs are designed thoughtfully, it reduces unnecessary stressors and ambiguity. It also embeds the conditions people need to thrive, such as greater autonomy in how work gets done, clear expectations, and sustainable workloads.
Unfortunately, most workers don’t have a say in job design. In fact, Gallup research shows that only 46% of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, and the American Psychological Association cites “changes in job roles and responsibilities” as the most frequent type of change U.S. workers report experiencing. Layer on ongoing workforce reductions—what Glassdoor has dubbed “forever layoffs”—and many employees are left absorbing new or shifting responsibilities and heavier workloads that aren’t formally reflected in their roles. Amid this instability, purpose remains especially important within a job for the vast majority of Gen Z and Millennial workers.
This is where the process of job crafting can make a meaningful difference. When jobs are poorly designed—lacking clarity, purpose, or alignment—job crafting offers workers and organizations a way to proactively reshape aspects of their work to regain control and support their well-being. Below, we explore what job crafting is, its unique role in workplace mental health, and resources for employers to better support their teams using this lever.
What is job crafting?
Job crafting is an employee initiated, proactive process where employees essentially redesign aspects of their role to suit their strengths, create meaning, and improve job satisfaction. While traditional job design focuses on managers shaping roles from the top down, job crafting centers on employees customizing their work—including tasks, interactions and perceptions—to better align with their strengths, motivations, and interests.
Job crafting is usually broken up into three types:
Task crafting: Changing the number, scope, or type of tasks one performs
Relational crafting: Altering how, when, or with whom one interacts at work
Cognitive crafting: Modifying how one perceives the purpose or significance of their work
Put simply, job crafting is about tailoring both the practical elements of work, the “who, what, where, when, and how,” and the deeper “why” behind it. In other words, the purpose and meaning we get from how we think about our work.
It can also occur along a spectrum from informal to formal. Informal job crafting is the everyday ways in which people naturally adjust work and the way they work. This might be referenced as individual working styles, or simply “flexibility.” Formal job crafting comes into play when these adjustments are formalized into job descriptions and work processes.
How does job crafting help workplace mental health?
Job crafting helps mitigate the challenges of work while enhancing the positives—from helping teachers manage stressful work to mitigating burnout among university administrators. Meta-analyses have shown that job crafting is linked to “increased job satisfaction, motivation, work engagement, organizational commitment, and job performance, and decreased strain and turnover intentions.” Other positive outcomes include greater purpose and meaning from work, a sense of personal achievement, and resilience amidst adversity.
At the end of the day, job crafting is about connecting the work to the person. It intersects with ideas of job clarity, autonomy, and flexibility—key conditions that enable individuals to be and work their best. Conditions that workers also identify as important to improving workplace well-being.
How Leaders Can Enable Job Crafting to Improve Workplace Well-Being
Whether we see the benefits of job crafting is typically determined by the level of support an organization and its leadership provides and the sense of autonomy and self-efficacy that a worker feels.
Drawing on research and expert insights, here are a few considerations as you explore job crafting in your organization:
Engage team members in an interactive dialogue. This ensures that any adjustments are not only mutually beneficial to the individual and the organization, but that they are informed and actually stick longterm.
Revisit regularly. Work may shift seasonally alongside individual team members’ wants and needs. As the world continues to evolve, keep revisiting work agreements to ensure they're doing what they're intended to do.
Take a systems lens. This is where leadership and organizational support comes in. Consider embedding job crafting throughout the employee journey, such as during onboarding, regular check-ins, and performance reviews. This allows the process to become a part of how work gets done, not an ad hoc exercise. Ensure adjustments are transparent across teams and realistic within the broader demands of the work. Job crafting requires proactive management to avoid creating confusion.
Job design is a tactical way organizations and managers can improve employee mental health, engagement, and organizational outcomes. To learn more about job crafting, check out these resources:
Read more about job crafting from Stanford and Harvard Business Review.
Use this free resource by the Greater Good Science Center.
Or purchase this job crafting workbook from the University of Michigan.
For a deeper look at how your organization supports mental health across the employee lifecycle, download our free worksheet. OR schedule a free strategy call to identify practical and tailored steps your organization can take to integrate mental health across the employee journey.
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