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First of all: job crafting is something different than job carving. Bee job carving the focus is mainly on work. You work on all the side jobs in a position until you are left with only the core tasks. You actually keep the why off the track. You transfer the snippets that you deleted to another function. Most of the time it lies job carving (and then matching the right people with those jobs taken care of) in the hands of management and HR.
Job crafting has a different field of view. Here is the why of the individual employee at the center. What is he (or she, of course) good at, what makes him happy? By shifting tasks and accents based on this, the position better matches the employee's talents and personality.
Jobcrafting is certainly not about just letting someone do what they want. No company likes such an informal approach. Good job crafting has absolute advantages for the organisation from a business point of view:
Perhaps such an individual approach sounds like a heap of extra time and work in a manager's already busy schedule. That is precisely not the intention.
At the jobcrafting it is mainly the employee himself who has to get to work. With intensive self-exploration and an adventurous journey of discovery into your own preferences and talents. To elaborate the results in a proposal for the ideal personal work situation, and then discuss this with the manager. It is up to management and HR to stimulate and facilitate the employee in this regard.
How to take that step towards job crafting? Unfortunately, it is not a matter of just turning a switch. Many employees still have to get used to this new vision of work, and the control they can take over it themselves. But not all managers are already set up for this form of leadership either. HR can play a good pioneering role in this.
By informing the organisation about the added value of job crafting for example, or joining a support call. But also consider, for example, setting up a format that allows the employee to form an image of the most appropriate personal work situation by means of a step-by-step plan. Preferably use an online platform for this, so that in each subsequent step, a link can be made to previous phases, and the employee can easily click through to supporting information.
The employee's route to the optimal personal work situation must include at least the following stations:
In this phase, all parts of the track must be inventoried. That means: splitting the current job into all sub-tasks. What does someone do in a day? And how much time is spent on each part? It can help to keep a work diary for this for a few weeks.
Of course, this is possible in an old-fashioned paper agenda, but a handy online overview that automatically adds up the minutes is very easy!
Put all those loose puzzle pieces together and put them in order of personal preference. What task gives the employee energy? And which tasks are the proverbial sour apples that have to be bitten by over and over again?
It is interesting to see if the tasks that are spent most of the time actually belong to the personal top 3. If not, it immediately becomes clear why the job is starting to bother someone more and more.
Another important step is discovering someone's motives and talents. What is someone good at, and what is a pitfall? Which workplace and working hours would be most ideal?
There are countless tests for this, in all grades and for different target groups. Get good advice in your choice. A blended approach, i.e. organising a live conversation with a coach in addition to completing one or more online questionnaires, is definitely recommended.
If all is well, the employee has now received many new insights. About the content of the work, but also about the content of his or her personality. All individual energy guzzlers and energy boosters are now listed. Then the results from step 2 can now be compared to those of step 3. With this new information, create another top 10 of the job tasks.
The task that deserves the title superenergy booster goes to 1. And the energy guzzler, of course, dangles a bit sadly at the bottom.
Can he actually be demolished from the position without too much risk of injury? Then throw that sub-task aside and consider whether there might be a colleague with whom he could be cherished. Yes, this is how we get a bit unnoticed on the path of job carving, that's right.
Divide the working time to be spent over the various components, and especially focus as high as possible in your top 10. Are there any other wishes, such as working from home more often, different working hours or a desk closer to the window?
Is there still a task missing that is high on the wish list, or is extra training needed? These kinds of elements also play a role in finding job satisfaction, so be sure to include them in the personal plan.
This step can be quite exciting. Surely someone comes to the manager with a very personal story. Here, good expectation management is essential: the employee should not expect that all wishes can be met one-on-one. The manager should get out of the “yes but” mode for a while, listen carefully and contribute to solutions as much as possible.
If the shifts are not too big, it won't be too difficult to transform the plan into a new personal job profile. If it means that colleagues' job content should also be tinkered with, there is of course more work to be done.
Then it is time for a team discussion, where you can 'quartet' with each other in all openness and trust with each other with the different wishes, talents and time spent.
Whatever comes out: record the new agreements properly. It should be clear what can be expected of each employee, but also what topics are better to come to a colleague for. Not only because the other person is much better at it than you, but also likes to do it.
Job crafting includes different phases. A lot of 'homework' has to be done by the employee, and when working out together with the manager and possibly colleagues, there will be a lot of puzzling with all insights. We said it before: a digital platform that you can tailor to your organisation's needs is then very useful. You can put everything in it. From time registration to job profiles, from driver analyses to training plans.
Would you like to know more about its possibilities? Create a free Pluvo account and discover the possibilities.
As an educational expert specialising in online learning, I have been writing blogs for Pluvo for 5 years. My focus is on powerful learning solutions for organisations. Universal Design for Learning and inclusive learning are my passion; I believe that education should be accessible and fun for everyone.
I've been combining my 35 years of HR experience with copywriting for over 15 years. And even then, I learn new things over and over again. That's what makes writing blogs for Pluvo so incredibly interesting!
