If an employee comes up to you and tells you they want to do some crafting, don't put on a poker face

One way to retain your employees is to help them personalize their work. The job crafting technique is a very useful starting point.

Job crafting? you ask yourself. And does that work?

Amy WrzesniewskiProfessor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, conducted a special study to demonstrate the impact of job crafting. In recent years, his work has focused on observing hospital maintenance workers to see how job-crafting techniques affected their work experience and morale. He set up two groups: one simply followed the job description, while the second was asked to do other related tasks of their choice. The differences between the two groups are significant: “The second group found meaning in their work and saw themselves and their purpose as radically different from their colleagues.” “Allowing an employee to influence the scope of work changes the meaning of that work and allows them to take responsibility for their work,” says this researcher. Wrzesniewski’s work shows that job crafting can promote engagement, job satisfaction and resilience. If you’re curious, you can watch Wrzesniewski recently explain how to hire Google employees:

According to coach Carmen Castro, “Many companies have failed to understand that workers, particularly those between the ages of 25 and 40, no longer view their work solely as a means of meeting their basic economic needs. They want more: personal fulfillment, developing their professional goals, finding the motivation that allows them to use all their skills and talents. They are no longer satisfied with a salary, a schedule, or a vacation plan. They want to find joy and fulfillment in their work.”

“Of course, a good salary is a necessary recognition of a good job,” the coach admits, but lack of resources is not a sufficient excuse for a company to give up its interest in attracting and retaining talent. A study by the organization redEmprendia clarified the existence of a positive correlation between engagement in the work and performance of employees. According to this study, managers and HR professionals must take into account that they will be able to improve employee performance by raising their level engagement. Focusing on it “can promote performance gains beyond what is achievable through a traditional focus on performance itself,” the study concludes.

The report, on the other hand, determines which are the facts that determine the level engagement of an organization’s employees and suggests some possible interventions to increase it. The factors are the following: the characteristics of the task (meaning and diversity), the congruence of the values of the person and the organization; the line manager’s transformative leadership style; perceived organizational support and important self-assessments of employees.

task characteristics

It is important to create a perception among employees that doing their job has a significant impact on others. That is, perceive that their work has a concrete and visible benefit. To increase it, they recommend:

Rearrange the posts: including varied tasks that do not involve the employee in strenuous or demotivating routines. However, it should be noted that a high degree of variety of tasks can also be perceived as “doing more work”.

After construction:Agree with employees on the construction of their work. It is what is known job crafting is to turn the job they have into the one they really want. Sometimes it’s the small details that improve perception.

The congruence of the values of person and organization

Balancing the interests of employees with the interests of the company and sharing the same values is one of the great achievements of a company. Some of the suggestions in the RedEmprendia report to achieve this are:

Recruitment and Selection Practices: Recruit and select new employees whose beliefs and values align with those of the organization. The higher the initial selection effort, the lower the effort involved in socialization practices.

socialization practices: Strive for new employees to acquire knowledge of the values, skills, expected behaviors and social skills essential to fulfilling their role in the organization. Informal socialization practices, such as instilling values and norms through a partner and/or supervisor, are more effective than formal ones.

The transformative leadership style

Middle management should embrace a new style of transformative leadership. The interventions proposed to achieve them are:

education: Conducting intervention and training programs to promote a transformative style among business leaders

selection and promotion: Identify within the organization those employees who exhibit traits related to transformative behaviors. Personality variables that have been associated with these behaviors include, for example, extroversion or self-assessments, which consists of identifying the skills that you think make you suitable for the position.

Collaborative Environments: Foster environments that involve teamwork and collaboration among employees as they are more conducive environments for cultivating transformative leadership profiles.

Organizational support for employees

Here are some strategies to make employees feel supported by the company:

training and development programs: Implement training and development programs to improve employee skills and improve their perception of the support they receive from the organization

organizational recognition: Implement measures aimed at recognizing the commitment and performance of the staff

procedural fairness: Promote perceptions of the fairness of the funds used to determine the level and distribution of resources among employees

The most important self-assessments

Recruitment and Selection Practices: When recruiting and selecting new employees, consider participants’ key self-assessments, ie that each describes their worth and skills. However, the study warns of applicants’ tendency to inflate their scores on positive personality traits, which could undermine the predictive power of key self-assessments in these processes. Therefore, it is recommended to consider other factors such as experience or education.

– Education and training: Carry out education and training activities for employees on the relevant aspects of the main self-assessments, allowing them to experience a higher level of it.

As a common denominator of all factors, the introduction of transformative leadership styles that adapt to the needs of the moment is introduced.

“Transforming them from workers into fans of the company can only be achieved by seducing them – says Carme Castro – if we don’t succeed, our company’s most important asset, the talent of the people who work in it, will one day leave us “.